Gary Gygax, whom many see as the father of modern roleplaying, has created a new and masterful FRPG, "Lejendary Adventure". This book is the first in a series that will represent the core resources for this game. The other two are: "Lejend Master's Lore" and "Beasts of Lejend". You'll want the player's rules first, then purchase the LML if you are planning on LMing this game--don't buy it if you only want to be a player, it is full of key information that only the LM should read and know.

Regarding "The Lejendary Rules for All Players" I found it to contain all the needed information to play the game. This system is great fun, and it is a nice fresh change to D&D. However, don't compare this game to D&D they are VERY different. Lejendary Adventure is "skill" based not "class" based. Armor not only makes you harder to hit, but also absorbs damage. Weapons--there are plenty to choose from--do roughly the same amount of damage no matter what type or size.

There are many other things that make this a great system and a Must Have for serious RPGers, too many to mention here in fact.

The Lejendary Rules for All Players--along with Lejend Master's Lore and Beasts of Lejend--is one of three books that form the nucleus of the new Lejendary Adventures system launched by Dungeon's & Dragons creator Gary Gygax. It is a basic rules manual intended for players and game masters alike and introduces gamers to the fundamentals of the game system.

Sections in The Lejendary Rules include an introduction to the Lejendary Adventures system; "The Avatar," a guide to character creation; "Avatar Abilities," what characters can do and how; "Equipment Lists," including starting equipment tailored to characters' backgrounds and skills; "Extraordinary Abilities," such as spells and paranormal powers; and "The Journey," the basic rules of play. Other elements include reproducible character sheets and "Forlorn Corners," a short introductory adventure. Creation of Lejendary Adventures characters is described in a clear, step-by-step manner, and is intended to allow players to design exactly the characters they want by allocating points for characteristics and selecting an appropriate mix of abilities.

Lejendary Adventures characters have three basic characteristics, or "base ratings," Health, Precision, and Speed. An optional characteristic, Intellect, also exists, but is more applicable to nonplayer characters. These base ratings, along with race, are used to determine a character's level of proficiency in more than three dozen Abilities (e.g., Commerce, Divination, Weapons), which form the basis for character development in Lejendary Adventures.

Races available to players in The Lejendary Rules include familiar ones, like Human, Dwarf, Elf (Wylf) and Gnome; some traditionally not open to characters, such as Kobold and Orc (three varieties); and others that are fairly unique to the game, such as Ilf, Oaf (three types), Trollkin, and Veshoge.

Lejendary Adventures characters have the option of either joining various orders (reminiscent of the character classes that form the basis of systems like Dungeons & Dragons) or of remaining "unordered." Either course has its advantages, increased proficiency in various abilities for the members of orders, and greater flexibility for unordered characters. Characters with the prerequisite abilities can select from the Demonurge, Desperado, Ecclesiastic, Elementalist, Forester, Jongleur, Mage, Mariner, Noble, Outlaw, Rogue, Soldier, and Warlock orders.

One especially interesting aspect of The Lejendary Rules are the various lists that players use to select initial weapons and equipment for characters based on their abilities. For example, Minstrelsy allows a selection from the Low list, Hunt from the Middle list, Learning from the High list, Enchantment from the Magical list, Weapons from the Military list, and Alchemia from the Special list.

Incidentally, this softback, perfect-bound book is durable and certain to last a long time, something inadvertently brought to our attention after a cat knocked our copy into the toilet one night. The next day we fished it out and let it dry, after which it was a bit warped but completely intact and usable.

If this book has a palpable weakness, it lies in its artwork, which includes a full-color illustration on the cover (depicting a traditional adventuring party) and hundreds of black-and- white illustrations inside. Unfortunately, quality of the latter are somewhat uneven, and many are coarsely rendered or poorly scanned. Many of these are reminiscent of the cruder illustrations in the old AD&D Monster Manual, and generous souls may allow that this similarity is deliberate.

Aesthetic flaws aside, this system has no substantive deficiencies to speak of. Like the Lejendary Adventures system as a whole, it is a solid, enjoyable, easy-to-use gaming component that is sure to provide years of entertainment to a great many gamers.

The Lejendary Rules for all Players is the first release in the Lejendary Adventure game line.Its designer has succeeded in creating a truly exciting set of rules. The rules are straightforward, easy to explain to others, and very ingenious. Best of all the system is suitable both for veteran RPGers and newcomers to the hobby. One can swiftly create nearly any kind of adventurer to play. Numerous races are described for those that prefer to play non-humans and all are fresh and offer unique opportunities for role-playing. Rather than spend ages describing the ins and outs of this game I'll simply say this: it is fast and fun, offers great creative freedom to both players and GMs alike, and recaptures the "magic" of RPGing that many other systems seem to have lost. More books are to follow for this game and it seems that a thrilling new system is in the offing.

The movie is astounding, but this book is less than great because the interviewer of cast and crew was amateurish at best. EVERYONE was asked: "What did you think of the sets?" and "What was it like working with (fill in the blank)?". Those are the type of questions one would expect of a high school journalist. Some of the interviewees, however, managed to rise above the questions and provided some interesting insights into the film and it's making. The photos are very good, but don't show much of the "behind the scenes" perspective that would have been interesting. Get the book if you loved the movie as I do, but be aware that it is more of a coffee-table book than an exhaustive making-of book.

I have seen the movie and read this book about the making of the movie. I am struck by the interviews done with the actors and the production people involved with the making of this movie. They all agree on two things: That Martin Scorsese is a genius and that they were not terribly impressed with "The Gangs of New York" by Herbert Asbury upon which this movie is based. Scorsese may be a genius but his movie is not a work of genius. It is a flawed work which never quite comes together and therefore does not satisfy. Asbury's book will live on long after the movie is forgotten.

It's a given: if you love a movie, you'll love every "The Making Of..." that comes out about it. This is no exception. I loved this film. I enjoyed reading the script, and all the interviews and photographs were delicious gravy. The story of how Scorsese and his team captured, very accurately for the most part, the way The Five Points looked is itself worth the price. If there is anything negative to be said, it's that some of the photographs are not of the best quality. But I'm nitpicking. Treat yourself to this superb book!

This book is not meant as a precise historical account of the journeys of Lewis & Clark, but a study of the Missouri River and its surrounding areas as the explorers saw them, vs. how these areas have changed since then. Also, the portion of the Lewis & Clark journey west of the Rockies is not included, as the book sticks to the Missouri River. The most blatant changes in these ecosystems are the straightening and channelization of the river itself, which has led to massive environmental (and economic) damage for a pathetically small amount of barge traffic; plus the conversion of vast prairies to farmland which has led to serious losses of native flora and fauna. The book becomes a messy mixture of travelogue, as Botkin describes how to reach key areas of the river, and musings on the environmental health of these areas. While Botkin has had well-deserved success in environmentalist circles, his attempts to draw up naturalist ethics and morality significantly weaken this book. A lack of focus and the squishy writing of a college freshman are also damaging. Botkin is prone to god-awful metaphors, starting the main narrative awkwardly with "Rocks are nature's books; minerals are its words" and populating the rest of the book with more groaners like "Rocks Tell Stories and Soils are Nature's Braille" (subtitle of chapter 25). His attempts to wax philosophical on mankind's modern lack of connection with nature, while correct in spirit, are also unsuccessful in the writing department. See the awkward comparison of a pelican's spiraling flight path to society's shifting concerns for the environment in chapter 6, or the predictable comparison of prairie dog towns with an ideal human society in chapter 32. This book had the potential to be a real winner as both a travelogue with a historical twist and as a treatise on environmental philosophy. Unfortunately it merely flirts with those two strengths without really nailing them, and is sunk overall by weak writing.

This is a fantastic book for anyone visiting the Missouri river.

Book has handy maps, illustrations and reference points for the person making a modern day trip. Notes by Stephen Ambrose and Robert Redford at beginning and end of book commend book as well!

If you are only mildly interested in Lewis and Clark before reading this book - afterwards you'll be completely astounded by their feats!!

Nothing is as constant as change on the unfettered Missouri River. Few stretches of the Missouri remain as Lewis & Clark observed them. The river, as Botkin observes, is "nature's landscape painter". The canvas is continually changing in response to the forces of a river draining one-sixth of the U.S.

Botkin presents us with the story of the first navigation of the river by Lewis and Clarke, through the river's channalization by the Army Corp of Engineers, to present efforts to restore and interpret the river.

But, this book is more than an inventory of facts and issues. It contains vivid illustrations of nature's interrelationships and wry observations on the irony of man "improving" nature.

This is a very practical, pragmatic, yet poetic book.

Garry Jenkins has written a thorough book on the life of a man who is, arguably,one of the greatest thespian talents in modern times; however, it is obviously without input from its subject, Daniel Day-Lewis. This book does give interesting detail of the romance of Day-Lewis' parents, (his father was Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis; his mother, a member of the Balcon family theater dynasty), as well as the story of the actor's odd aristocratic upbringing. The rest is merely information that a fan could have gleaned from various media resources, especially entertainment magazines. In Jenkins' defense, Daniel Day-Lewis, just turned forty, is very much a developing subject. The author, currently writing a sequel, is fortunate in that respect

Prentice Hall's other books (Core Java, Just Java, etc.) were so good that I didn't bother to carefully look at Multithreaded Programming with Java Technology before buying it. I wish I had looked closer! This book is poorly written, poorly edited, poorly organized, and is only partially about Java threads. It appears to be a port from the authors' previous book on pthreads, and takes up too much space covering details of the underlying hardware without adequately covering Java itself.

Many of the examples show C code, and their coverage of Java almost seems like an afterthought. If you're interested in Java threading and are in the market for a good book, I suggest that you keep looking. For an example of the poor style of writing, look at chapter 4's section on The Runnable Interface.

Reader's opinions are very important to me, after all I didn't write this just to see my name in print. I wrote it because there were no books I found adaquate (that and to become rich, famous, and have beautiful women kiss the ground I walk on).

The one thing which is very true is that this is NOT a book about Java, it's a book about multithreading. I feel it is important for programmers to understand how Java is implemented on lower level libraries and how those run on the actual hardware, and how that hardware works. Not everybody wants to know all of this. (They *should*, but alas! not everyone takes my excellent advice.)

Of course, by trying to cover so much in so little space (I worked very hard to keep it short), I've bitten off an awfully large chunk to swallow. And seeing as you the reader has to do the swallowing... You gotta make up your own mind. Some people do not like humor and computer science in their programming texts. Others love it.

The one clearly wonderful thing about this book is that I got to spend time working with some of the finest computer scientists in the world (Guy Steele, Doug Lea, Tim Lindholm, Dave Butenhof, etc.). I also got to influence the Java 2 spec and Sun's implementation. (Am I bragging here? Oh well.)

The reviews are pretty fair and reflect precisely that problematic issue of depth, Do you want to just write some Java code, or do you want to understand it too? [Except for that last review. This is not good writing?! Poppycock! This is beautiful, elevated prose! This is sophisticated, humorous, precise, concise, incisive explaination, elaboration, clairfication! Profusely illustrated and painstakingly drawn! The Philistine.]

Thus, IMHO, This is one fine piece of computer science literature, destined to become a classic!

-Bil

This book is a must for any serious programmer who works with threads. The authors do a great job of explaining not only the basics, but also the most advanced topics in multithreaded programming. This includes advanced means of synchronization, differences between platforms, and an excellent discussion of performance issues. True, the book is not 100% about Java, but I certainly consider this a strength, not a weakness. This book is for those who want to understand what they are doing, and not just blindly follow some code examples. Great book, great achievement.

I am a big fan of the Rough Guide series and of their philosophy of including socio-political commentary, to remind travelers that the world isn't just for show. And what the China guide does well it does VERY well, with great detail. But my wife and I took both this book and a competitor's guidebook for our monthlong China trip, and Rough Guide contained maybe 1/3 as many things to see and do, and left many places to stay off the list altogether. Worse, some maps were just plain wrong. A travel guidebook that you find yourself leaving in the hotel room is not a good one.

The Rough Guides are considered among the "cream of the crop" in the guidebook world, and this book is no exception. I used it extensively in the planning phase of my recent month-long trip to China, and it was very helpful.

The background sections of the book are outstanding, giving the reader a solid overview of Chinese history and culture. The primary sites of interest to travelers are adequately covered as well, and so the book is very helpful in planning one's itinerary.

The main drawback of the volume is it's weight. If you are backpacking in China, as I was, this book is pretty heavy to be lugging around. Therefore, unless you are staying in China more than a couple of weeks, you might consider looking at the smaller city guides.....or ripping the necessary sections out of this book and packing only those in your rucksack.

Highly recommended for pre-trip planning at home. Recommended for packing and taking to China *if* you are going on an extended trip to the country.

I traveled extensively throughout China in 1998, and I found the roughguide a much more practical book for getting around. The charts inside the guide allow you to find the information quickly, whereas the other popular guide forces you to flip through pages with apparent random entires of Chinese Characters, which can be frustrating and stressful when you climb into a chinese taxi in the middle of the road, and you need to show the driver where you want to go. Although lonely planet seems to have more detailed information, the well organized layout of the Roughguide makes it ten times more desireable when your actually on the road. I'm looking forward to the new edition, as I left my roughguide in China with a friend who only had a lonely planet!

Though this is a good introduction to the topic of eschatology, this book wouldn't be the first choice of recommendation. Lewis' point throughout the whole book is for Christians to be wary of end-time madness and speculation. To avoid the "Hal Lindseyan" view of understanding the unfolding of prophetic events. Though Lewis does a good job presenting the reader on what eschatology is and what the main views of eschatology are, he doesn't give firm conclusions on certain issues and passages. He doesn't give his own millennial or interpretive positions. All he does is broadly go against the end-time "madness" of some classical dispensational "speculators". He spends too much time refuting dispensationalism, while not giving firm alternatives to this position. In the last chapter, he even states that we all could be wrong (p. 133)! I got the feeling that Lewis was more sympathethic to the more moderate stream of evangelicalism, rather than the more conservative/fundamentalist stream. Overall, a good survey of different eschatological viewpoints but very weak in conviction and presentation.

Albert Einstein once said that everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. The problem with many popular works on the end times is that they try to oversimplify this complex subject. Mr. Lewis avoids this trap: this is not an easy subject and he has not written an easy book. Taking a thoughtful look at what the whole of Scripture says, he challenges many common assumptions and offers a perspective that many readers may be seeing for the first time. Refreshingly, he is willing to leave open the issues about which Scripture is unclear.

There are those who will not like this volume. Those who want prophecy condensed into a well-defined, neat little package, or who merely want support for the positions they already hold, or who are looking for the Christian equivalent of the horoscope column will be disappointed. The author doesn't claim to have all the answers, but he does have thoughtful and challenging answers to at least these three questions. I strongly recommend it.

This book is excellent reading and is well-balanced! I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in end-time events from a scholarly point of view. There is no sensationalism here, just the facts, presented by one who has certainly done his homework, has taught the subject for many years at a respected Bible college in the Detroit area, and presents the various views on prophecy with dignity and respect. Further, the author has a pastor's heart (for he is one) and is able to take a calm look at the sign of the times and instruct us as to how we should then live.

If you have no clue what a pthread function name is, or what this crazy multithreading idea is all about, then maybe this book will help you some...but I have my doubts. Otherwise, this serves as both a poor reference, a poor primer guide, a poor advanced guide, and poor toilet paper. I've never seen a book manage to miss as a reference, miss as a primer, and miss as an advanced guide. There are easily better books and online resources available, as it's hard to be much worse than this.

This book is akin to learning French by teaching some basic grammar, some advanced grammar, and then shouting: "Je ne sais pas!" "Je voudrais un peu cherise!" without telling you what these mean...and leaving you clueless as to how to find out about them.

This Book covers too many topics unnecessarily, so when you really want to go a little deep into a specific field and make yourself clear, that will be not possible.
This book is not really suitable for real multi-threaded programmer.
New multi-threaded leaners maybe will found it useful for basic concepts.

The authors of this book, in addition to their knowledge of threads, also know how to teach. The only shortcoming I could point out is that certain topics are treated shallowly, while less important topics are explained with too much detail.

What's really interesting about the book is the authors' ``don't do that'' style. Another reviewer found this style to be bad. I found it highly helpful. Instead of presenting a single solution for a problem (``The One and Only True Solution''), and leaving the reader wondering about alternative solutions, they go on to explain what's wrong with these other solutions. People learn by making mistakes, and the authors point out lots of mistakes that can be avoided. This is an invaluable feature, not a bug.

I'm a Santa Clara University student, and I'm in the class taught by the author of this book. I'm an experienced programmer who knows PHP, ASP, Java, VBA, and some C and C++, and I must say, this book is very confusing to follow. It offers very little examples and explinations; the accompanied cd-rom doesn't make it easier at all. You won't be able to understand half the slides presented on it without him physically explanining it in front of you; even if you were in his presence, you'll still have a big ? mark on the top of your forehead. For those who enjoy the 'hello world' approach, don't bother with this book; the only words you'll be seeing in the end are 'hello class repeat'. I'm very sure there are other books than this that can teach assembly more fluently.

Put simply, this book is terrible. The lack of examples throughout the text keeps those without prior knowledge of the subject from fully grasping the concepts. Dr. Lewis failed miserably with this book. Please do not purchase it unless you would like very expensive fire wood.

I have been teaching X86 assembly language for 6 years as an undergraduate course in Computer Engineering in San Jose State University. The students have been always concerned about the value of this course after graduation. Many have the false perception that learning assembly is no longer needed since most of our programming is done nowadays with high level languages. Last semester I introduced assembly language as a tool to program embedded systems and I used the first few chapters of this book to demonstrate to students the fact that 98% of processors sold are embedded. As a result, most students selected their class project based on one of the embedded examples shown in this book. For students who needed more X86 details, I referred them to a complementary text book. But, for those who needed to understand the fundamental link between c/C++ and assembly, this book was very helpful. I would recommend this book for Juniors or Seniors who would like to have a better understanding of the high level and assembly language interface. To maximize the effectiveness of this book, I recommend the use of more complex real-life design examples, the use of commercial Assemblers, and more emphasis needs to be given for embedding assembly into high level language and vice versa.