One of the aspects I especially liked about this book was the concentration on Lewis' Christian beliefs, and how they effected his literature. Some other biographies seem to lack this very important side.

If you're looking for a very thorough and meticulous biography, you should probably stay away from this one. Coren simply outlines the major events in Lewis' life, without straying from the general purpose: to reflect on the life of the 20th century's greatest Christian Apologist.

I found it most interest, and, even though I believe I'm an up and coming Lewis scholar, still feel it was captivating and fairly in depth. A good quick read for Lewis fans.

First of all, formulas are not presented in a way that is helpful. Facts should be highlighted and processes explained more clearly and concisely. As a non-programmer (I've taken web programming, computer science 1 and 2 up through binary trees), I felt that the symbols used for representing a lot of the rules were more confusing, and the text didn't help much in the explanation of what these combinations of symbols actually represented. Luckily I had a friend who could help me sum up what these things meant!

Our instructor also posted solutions to the problems from the instructor's book. One week there were 5 corrections for 10 homework problems (where the meat of the problem was actually approached in the WRONG WAY). Not to mention the multiple typos that any spell checker could have found.

For $[money], I'm sure there's a better textbook out there. To quote one of my friends, there is a better interpretation of Jim Gray's quote:

"This is a great book!" (I didn't read it at all!)
"This is the book I wish I had written!" (Then it wouldn't be so messed up and I'd be rolling in the dough!)...

Do I now understand how transactions are implemented? Not 100%, but certainly a great deal more so than before I read this books' chapters on transactions. Indeed, I am far more equiped to work with transactions because this book helped me understand what is going on "under the hood". While it wasn't "code level" details, it certainly satisfied this novices' thirst for a general understanding of transaction implementation plus it piqued my curiousity to go on and learn more about transactions as written by the likes of Gray.

Further, I have been given a nice introduction to Database Theory and the topic of Entity Relationships - an entire study of how best to design our data, which before hand I was completely unaware of!

Two chapters seemed rather difficult and one of the authors was kind enough to suggest I study Susanna Epp's fine "Discrete Mathematics with Applications" before heading back into foray of DB theory.

So, all and all, I found this book a delight and well worth working through.

Being outside of the academia, but still needing a foundational theoretical (but not necessarily formal or overly detailed) reference, I was impressed on the ability of the authors to present concise and useful practical facts. Some other textbooks suffer from overwrought attention to topics in database normalization, correctness proves, and such - this one gives a lot of practical advise in optimization, distributed databases and issues of concurrency control and transaction processing. Chapters are organized in a self-contained fashion, so with a bit of background in databases, reader can just read a chapter in isolation if she is interested in a topic.

In summary, a very useful book.

Available at stores that sell everything for a dollar or less, this book is a hard-copy bargain. Even for those who have read other campaign trail books, this book offers a combination of unvarnished sad truths (Presidential candidates speaking to empty rooms, waving to empty runways, all to create the "virtual reality" of having something to say and someone to listen to it) together with a sense of lost opportunities.

As campaign reform looms on the horizon, I found this book especially appealing for its detailed look at "the people's candidate," Morry Taylor, the "Grizz"--a person I never heard of during the actual campaign. The book really drives home how flawed our existing electoral system is today, as well as all the campaign contributions, "rented strangers," and other anomalies that make good Presidents an accident rather than a choice.

I read the book shortly after reading Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, "The Radical Center", on citizen-centered politics of choice, and there could be no better book for appreciating just how radical Halstead and Michael are, than this book.

I read the hardback version of this book, which was called 'Trail Fever." I never liked that title, but I think I like 'Losers' even less. Yes, it was a chapter title in hardback version, but the real losers in Lewis's book are the so-called winners, Clinton and Dole. By contrast, Lewis shows the strength of character of the putative losers, especially in compelling profiles of Morry Taylor, Alan Keyes, and even Pat Buchanan.

What I especially liked about the book was Lewis' fight not to get totally taken over by what seems to be his naturally skeptical and cycnical view of the world. In fact, the best writing in the entire book deals with John McCain (Lewis is an unabashed McCain fan here, four years before that sentiment became in vogue) and - in particular - McCain's relationship with Clinton advisor David Ifshin. This chapter is very far removed from a skeptic's view. In fact, the emotion of the McCain/Ifshin relationship brought me to tears, as I think it would anyone.

Lewis is also affected by the stark honesty and un-political-ness of Morry Taylor, who is a real revelation here. And despite being on an entirely different plane politically than Alan Keyes, Lewis never ceases to be amazed at Keyes' blindingly brilliant oratorical flights of fancy.

Here's another neat thing about the book (well, the hardcover version at least)...elliptical asides about Tabitha Soren (of MTV 'Choose or Lose' fame), a later reference to 'my houseguest at the time,' and an acknowledgement to the help of one 'Tabitha Sornberger' (Soren's real name). She became Mrs. Michael Lewis not long after the publication of this book.

The second section of the book deals with another fifteen year old who managed to become the top rated legal advisor on the askme.com website, even though he came from a poor family, never touched a law book, and learned about the law exclusively from the internet and television. In both these cases, ordinary boys who otherwise would be categorized as [normal], managed to do extraordinary things by using the Internet.

The other sections of the book deal with gnutella, tivo, polling, the sense of time, and the idea that accessibility of information due to technology may lead to the downfall of mankind. I really enjoyed this book, but I though that overall it was rather incomplete, this book could have been easily doubled in size by examining more social phenomenon. I was really surprised that there was very little ink spent on the open source movement and how strangers are now collaborating on major projects. This was partially covered in the gnutella chapter, but you could write a whole book on the social implications of open source development.

In this book Lewis begins to look at some of the social implications of the Internet and some of the crazy stories that are occurring as a result of the Internet Phenomena. Examples include:

·A 15 year old becomes the leading legal advisor on AskMe.Com.

·Another youth (15 also) draws SEC fire after earning $800K in security trades through various pump and dump schemes on message board.

·An older rock band (40+ years old) get their fans to pay for their overseas tour BEFORE the concert. Ie. The fans funded the tour and they then show Lewis how they are leveraging the Internet to build a stronger relationship with their fans.

·He talks about Gnutella and peer-to-peer computing, created by an 18 year old that will radically affect intellectual capital and the way knowledge workers seek to protect it.

All and All the book is a good look at the social implications of the Internet. Other interesting books about American Culture/social changes are Credit Card Nation by Manning, Free Agent Nation by Pink and Fast Food Nation by Schlosser.

This book, without a doubt, is the story of Jim Clark; serial billionaire. Not having a Valley background I was curious as to how seminal his role was in chaning investors' preceptions about companies. Undoubtly the Netscape IPO was important but was it that much of a watershed event?

Lewis notes a number of times that Clark has no interest in the past, but the whole book is really about his past.

The chapter on the Healtheon IPO roadshow and the Wall Street Journal article was absolutely great. Lewis can really write.

The inside baseball aspect of the book is why did Clark allow Lewis the great access? What's the agenda? Is it to help the IPO of myCFO? I don't think so, but I wondered about the book's utility as a tool to promote not only Clark but at least HLTH.