This book portrays a man who contributed to the strength of the United States. It should be a "must read" for all high schoolers.

"My Friend Harry" is a favorite of my grade 1 and 2 special education students. With each re-reading, the friendship between James and his stuffed animal friend, Harry, becomes more special and real. Although Harry says no words, he is personified beautifully by Kim Lewis. It's a wonderful, warm tale to help bridge the transition between home and school and all the emotions, happy and sad, that that entails. James wants to bring Harry to school until he adjusts to James' being gone but one suspects the separation is equally traumatic for both. "My Friend Harry" is a great vehicle for classroom (and home) discussion regarding feelings, love and friendship!

The book IS inconsistent. Unlike the brilliant Alice books, there are places where what Carroll is trying to do just doesn't work. But this book is written on a GIGANTIC scale. Carroll tries to take the basis of Alice, and expand it into something of real profundity - something that covers an entire moral and ethical universe. And much of the time, he actually *succeeds* at such an impossible task. There are scenes that are hysterically funny, and scenes that will make you weep. The book is VERY touching, and gives a strong and unforgettable message on the totality, wonder and all-conquering nature of all-conquering love. Sylvie, the fairy-child, is Love Itself, embodied. Despite its spottiness, this book is very, very impressive, and you will want to read it more than once, just to re-experience the good stuff, which is very, very good.

"For I think it is Love. For I feel it is Love. For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!"

Indeed. And Amen.

It cannot be separated from the second part "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded".
In this set of two novels, Lewis Carroll appears as what we rarely know about him. He is the prophet of modern literature. He constantly passes from real life to fairyland, from reality to imagination, from realism to moral depth. Many lines are entertwined in this tale. the story of Bruno and Sylvie, two delightful young fairy children. The story of Lady Muriel and her love for and from Arthur. The story of Arthur Forester, MD, and his dedication to healing as far as far can be, even if it includes his own death in this dedication. Many other lines, I said. The line of Bruno and Sylvie's father, the deposed King who becomes the King of Fairyland. The line of the Professor and the Other Professor, and this drastic vision of both responsible and irresponsible science. The line of pure poetry constantly scattered among the pages. The line of so many children's tales in the form of tales or nursery rhymes and other Mother Goose productions. No one can come to the end of this richness and to a complete enumeration of all the stories and intricacies that are woven into this fascinating novel. A masterpiece that has mostly remained unknown or unrecognized.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

There is *nothing* disappointing about Sylvie and Bruno. It is not anything like Alice.. it surpasses Alice in every way.
This book is filled with a goodness that just can't help itself... and while it can be silly at times, and crazy at others, in the end it brings me to tears, every time. It is noble and honest and the characters steal your heart...
Not all of life is suffering... and this book is about that. I would really encourage you to pick it up. The first few chapters are a little crazy as you get used to this half-reality half-fantasy style... but it pulls you in so quickly, and will really blow you away.
An absolutely wonderful book!

This is one of the 2 texts we've had for our data structures course. I'm not sure what the other book is, because this one was so good. It covered the material in a clear and precise way. I even have a copy of this book today, for further reference!

This is my favorite data structures and algorithms book for three reasons. First, this book is well written and easy to read, and that's not always the case for a book like this. Second, it's concise, small, and easy to carry. I'm a consultant who changes assignments often and convenience can be important. And third, the text book problems at the end of each chapter are very interesting and always stretch the mind. There's even a final chapter called Engineering with Data Structures that contains lots of fun computational problems for a rainy afternoon. If you love programming, you'll love this book!

I seriously like this book. It's explaining is close to crystal clear to me when I read it, and the algorithms listed (in pseudo-code) take it to a practical level.

It is getting harder and harder for people to remember what a fresh breath of air Lewis Carroll's Alice stories must have been in stuffy Victorian nurseries. (After all, today's culture has replaced the romantic nursery with the plastic daycare.) In those days, standard fare for children were characters who earned "sweetmeats" for memorizing a psalm or some other school lesson, who never got dirty without being punished, who were generally good (albeit boring) role models for young people who were to be seen, but not heard.

Then, one "golden afternoon," an eccentric, avuncular, dear man told a group of children a story about a girl who tumbled down a rabbit hole and found herself in a world called Wonderland. I can picture the delight on the listeners' faces at each strange new twist--be it a talking animal that is as mad as they come . . . or an admittedly hilarious pun.

Take the Mock Turtle, who tells Alice of a school master he and his classmates called Tortoise. Since this teacher was a turtle, why was he called "Tortoise," Alice wanted to know. The Mock Turtle replied, "We called him Tortoise because he taught us."

Admittedly, the title character is still very Victorian. (I would say, hopelessly wishywashy.) That she exhibits only healthy curiosity, not outright astonishment, at the fact that a world like Wonderland can exist is a hint of what kind of children will enjoy this book. These ideal readers are those who see no difference between the mad world around them and the mad world down a rabbit hole. (Once they start to see, and to expect, rhyme and reason in what they read, it is time for J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan".)

As for you adults, don't worry about the plot, because there are several, all of them wiggly, that keep the story going. Don't look for much substance either. Unlike other fantasy worlds, Wonderland is a place where anything goes and so everything does go. Go mad, that is.

Despite this _and_ the fact that children are no longer confined by Victorian standards, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" remains popular and in print. This may have something to do with Carroll's "golden afternoon" of storytelling (honored with its inclusion in the lyrics of a Disney song). I personally consider it an apt symbolism of the truth that the _place_ called Wonderland just happens to be hidden somewhere in the _time_ called childhood. How fortunate are those who have known that golden afternoon and all its wonders, and who remember how to return!

Worthless book with a lot of pages

This is a wonderful book. Strong fundamentals are a must, to gain expertise in any field of work. This book does exactly the same, with a good number of real life examples before taking you into the depths of how some of the awesome systems (in terms of user, data and transaction volume)such as airline booking systems etc. are designed. Kudos Burnie!! You know exactly how to drive the concepts into the minds of technologists and be remembered for years.

If you're startiong out with MQSeries, get this book. Even if you're using some other message oriented middleware, read the first 8 chapters. This book is an absolute must have.

This book takes up where its author's personal quest, detailedin its pages, left off. As the author tells it, he made a point offollowing former Attorney General Edwin Meese III around the country to hector him on his understanding of the meaning of the United States Constitution. Whenever Meese simply ignored him, Jaffa says (though not in those words), it was a great rhetorical victory for Jaffa!

One might read Jaffa's account and conclude that Meese was simply responding to Jaffa's behavior the way a polite man would. Jaffa's rhetoric in this book also strikes the reader as being aimed below the belt.

Following on a private letter that James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson well after both of them had retired from public life, Jaffa insists that all of the constitution must be read in the refracted light of the Declaration of Independence. This is a common reading of the Old Left, one that Abraham Lincoln and Mario Cuomo share.

Of course, it has no relationship to reality. Neither in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 nor in the ratifying conventions did people make a point of holding the constitution to the Declaration's standard; indeed, given that the Declaration includes sections upbraiding King George III for trying to provoke slave rebellions in Virginia, one wonders exactly how "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" have come to seem to Jaffa, _et al._ to be the Declaration's message.

Avoid this book, then, unless you desire to see an exotic brand of "conservatism" in its most virulent strain. Other than that, it's both unreliable and unreadable.

This contribution to the seemingly endless debate over original intent serves a purpose in demonstrating that what often passes as a jurisprudence of original intent is anything but that. Jaffa effectively shows that the denial of natural law by modern jurists, both conservative and liberal (although fellow conservatives are the target of most criticism in this book), cannot be squared with the views of the Founders. Jaffa's further argument, that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the words of the Declaration of Independence, is less successful. A problem is that the author focuses so much on one case (the Dred Scott decision) to prove his point that it is difficult to see how natural law thinking would be applied to other, less emotionally-charged cases. Apparently, Jaffa wants judges to read Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and the like and decide cases based on the insights gleaned from therein. It should be said, however, that the inclusion of the three critical essays from fellow professors, and Jaffa's reply to all three, does allow for an expansion of the author's thinking beyond what is presented in the main, introductory essay (although it does mean that there is a good deal of repetition througout the book). As a critique of self-proclaimed originalists, this is a useful work, but it has little in the way of constructive proposals.

Though Dr. Jaffa makes a habit of the poor practice of shooting his friends in the back, at times it is the duty of friends--upon being confronted by an enemy of moronic proportions--to come to one another's assistance in light of such great an injustice. The reviewer, or rather backroom scribbler, who had the audacity to rate Dr. Jaffa's book as worthy of only one star, must be a woman or else a madman, for only one of those two would be capable of such an unjustified criticism supported by such weak polemics. Though Dr. Jaffa's book does not take full account of the extent to which Lincoln--and the founders--understood the inherent dangers of equality (as they were seen in practice and elucidated by Tocqueville) it is nonetheless a master stroke of penmanship, philosophy, and history that sheds light on the possibility for practical, yet noble, government that is afforded us under the framework of the constitution. Dr. Jaffa's detractor deserves the penalty afforded by Jefferson to Sodomites--although in this case we'd be cutting off the upper-most organ as well as the lower, thus putting the guillotine to a dual use.

When I first signed up for the theory of computation I expected it to be a great class. I had looked over some of the subject material before the course started and it found it very interesting. I mean, who can't find this subject interesting? Learning about not only how computers function but what their limitations are. I'll tell you who, anyone who has had the misfortune of reading this book. I don't know how or why two obviously educated people can write a book that is so lackluster. This book turned my course into an absolute nightmare. I instead turned to another book, which ended up saving me. Do yourself a favor and run from this book as fast as you can.

This was one of my favorite textbooks from college. In fact, I still have it on my shelf. It is a fantastic textbook, attemtping to introduce the Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science, in essence the science. In covering this, it moves into topics such as Finite Automata, Parsing, and Turing Machines.

I feel the negative reviews are due to some confusion. This is not an algorithms book, or a programming book, or an "intro to AI" book. It's a Math textbook. It's language is one of theorems and proofs, and this would be hard going for someone not comfortable with a college-level abstract mathematics background.

For those of you who have such a background, this book covers a topic where mathematics can become elegant. A physics major friend of mine fell in love with it, and he had no interest in Comp Sci!!

For it's topic, a similar book would be Feynman's lecture notes on Physics. Both those volumes and this book were attempt to bring the highest levels of theory within the field to the undergraduate audience. Both succeed.

Concerning the FIRST EDITION: (I haven't read the second edition but on flipping through it briefly it appeared, well, dumbed down) This is one of my favorite undergraduate textbooks. I would recommend it to anyone interested in math or in approaching computer science from a mathematics perspective. If you dont like abstract mathematics and proofs, or are just interested in writing code for actual, physical computers then skip it. That said, this is a great introductory book on computation theory, more rigorous and robust than others I've seen. The mathematical prerequisites are low- all that is needed is familiarity with basic set theory and careful mathematical proofs, but the more "mathematical experience" you have the faster you can read it. The level of rigor in the book is high for an introductory text, without becoming too bogged down (in my opinion). Chapter 2 introduces finite automata (regular languages), a great way to begin careful analysis of computation. Chap 3 covers context-free languages, and is perhaps too long (skim the later sections if you get bored). Chap 4 covers Turing machine basics. Chap 5 gives two alternative formalisms of computation (unrestricted grammars and mu-recursive functions), shows their equivalence with Turing machines, and a construction of a universal turing machine. Chapter 6 is uncomputability and the halting problem. This is where things get really interesting, and all your previous effort is rewarded. Includes an unsolvable tiling problem. Chap 7 is computational complexity and np-completeness. Chaps 8 and 9 develop propositional logic and first-order logic (without equality). I feel introductory logic and computation theory should always be taught together, and this book does a decent job. Unfortunately the presentation of the Herbrand expansion theorem in chap 9 is hurried and awkward, and formal proof systems are not covered. Overall a great book, but it would be a good idea to supplement it with other inexpensive computation theory and logic books. After you've mastered this, check out Papadimitriou's "Computational Complexity" and Hartley Rogers' "Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability", two fantastic intermediate-level books.