In 1877 the great robber barons of steel and rail-Vanderbilt, Fisk, Gould, and others-appeared to have consolidated their rule over land and labor in the post-Civil War period. In their quest for infinitely expanding wealth, they subjected the workers under their command to ever-increasing demands for more work and reduced their wages time and again to below starvation levels. As thousands were laid off in the economic downturn of the 1870s, protests developed among the workers, and police were mobilized to quell the disturbances.
It was not the greed and brutality of the capitalist overlords that provoked a mass rebellion. It was that they made life virtually impossible for the working people. The great strike was centered in rail and began in the summer of 1877 in response to yet another wage cut.
A group of bold rail workers in West Virginia walked off the job. With no union, no organization, and nothing but a desperate urge to reclaim their humanity, their initiative spread like wildfire to thousands of other rail workers from Baltimore to St. Louis in a rolling surge of strikes, mass mobilizations and confrontations with the armed minions of capital. Ultimately general strikes of all workers were precipitated in St. Louis, San Francisco and other cities.
The rail barons sought to put down the uprising with military force, mobilizing state militias, police and national guard troops, firing into the crowds, killing dozens. For them it was only a question of forcing the masses to do their bidding. They believed that they were the rulers, the workers were there to serve them.
This great labor battle awakened the true spirit of liberty and solidarity among the laboring masses. In their struggle against the tyranny of capital they became the one true embodiment of democracy and the only hope of progress for toiling humanity. They laid the foundation stone for the worker's movement in the U.S. It gave a huge impetus to the organization of labor unions as well as the beginnings of labor political action: the formation of a workers party.
Reading this book brings home the reality of the class struggle in the U.S. and helps us to understand how and why it developed as it did. It also helps us understand why this class struggle won't go away as long as capitalism exists. It helps us to appreciate the organized struggle of the workers as the only way forward for humanity in its quest for a truly livable planet.

1877: the naked face of capitalism in America. In the midst of a deep-going economic depression, bosses imposed massive layoffs and deep pay cuts, and workers responded. From Chicago to St. Louis to New York to Philadelphia, rail workers, iron workers, carpenters, meatpackers and others launched a wave of massive strikes and street protests. The bosses and their government mobilized all their forces against the workers: courts, the press, police, the national guard and federal troops. While the workers were eventually beaten in these battles, the lessons learned helped forge political class consciousness and lay the basis for further struggles.

Foner's book is an exciting history of these days. He quotes extensively from labor and capitalist press of the day, from speeches and declarations by workers' leaders, and from government reports and documents to give a real feel of the roots of the uprising and the conflicting interests that lay behind it. I particularly found useful the description of what different workers leaders did at the time-- from conservative trade union presidents to militant socialists. Also the challenge and experiences of native-born and immigrant workers fighting together against their common exploiters. There is a lot to learn from this book today!

While this book gives a rich detail of the day-to-day struggles in 1877, two others will help get a broader perspective on the key issues political posed: American Labor Struggles 1877-1934, by Samuel Yellen, and Revolutionary Continuity, Marxist Leadership in the U.S. 1948-1917, by Farrell Dobbs.

The great labor uprising of 1877 started when a strike by rail workers swept across the country and was joined by many thousand, including the unemployed. What this book clearly shows is how interconnected U.S. workers were-how mutually affected by economic disaster-and how willing to embark on massive and militant resistance. Are workers that different today? Are today's bosses-as they push for wage concessions and bailouts--that much different from the rail bosses of 1877? This book makes you think more seriously about the great events that could quickly develop out of today's economic downturn.

Logo is a great learning tool for those who need to visualize seemingly complex mathematical concepts. This book fills a need in its discussion of algebra and calculus. Can be used in high school or for self study.

Logo is a great computer language for helping students to visualize seemingly complex problem in a simple intuitive way. This book fills a need for those who wish to use Logo to explore the field of mathematics. Can be used in high school or for self study.

The time of the architecture in the last century is a live time for the "architecture eminence" Philip Johnson. In his book you get closer look of his changing architecture from introducing the International Style to America in the early thirties to Post-Modernisms. A great book about a great man.

Shows his view over the architecture and over his own work. Very well ilustraded.

The 4th edition of Small Animal Clinical Nutrition is significantly different from the first 3 editions -- expanded, more information, different editors, different organization, etc.

Much of this volume is more technical than the average reader wants or needs. It is a textbook used in veterinary schools. But a dedicated reader could gain much from it. Even the average reader could benefit from the chapters on commerical pet foods and on home prepared diets.

Is good to see this book is not just written by nutriologist, there is an important contribution of clinicians dedicated to specific areas.

This book is a good starting point for anyone who needs to create a compiler, parser or scanner, but didn't read anything about compiler design theory yet. This book is completely self-contained and assumes only the familiarity with programming languages and the mathematical sophistication commonly found in juniors or seniors.

The material in this book has been taught for several years in one-semester first-year graduate courses at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., the State University of New York at Albany, and many other institutions. The bewildered looks of students in these institutions have motivated the authors to do several rewrites of the materials. That's why the book is pleasant to read and easy to understand.

The book contains a good introduction to state machines and all modern grammars, including, but not limited to, LALR(1).

Since the book doesn't cover code generation, but only lexical and syntax part, it is still actual since published 1976. For example, the most popular nowadays LALR(1) grammar, supported by Yacc and Bison, is a core of the GNU compiler and many other commercial compilers. But the book itself is tool-free, it explains the background that never expires, rather than bothering the reader with the tools which may exist today and vanish tomorrow. The example of such book with a mess of theory and tools is "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" by by Alfred V. Aho.

The book "Compiler Design Theory" is embracing, neat and actual.

Right off the bat you should know I keep buying this book because I keep giving my current copy away to people I love. This book brilliantly presents superlative examples of why Stuart Davis is seen by artists & art historians alike as one of the greatest American painters of the 20th Century. A thousand imitators have followed after Davis, trying to match his genius for both capturing and yet leading the American cultural zeitgeist. No one can match him: Davis is the master. Buy this book and see why. Better yet, buy multiples of this book: you will want THAT much to give your favorite people a treasure of a book from one of the few true diamonds amongst 20th century American artists, Stuart Davis. And have fun reveling.

At the outset, I must say that this is one of the most intellectually challenging books I have read in recent years. The subtitle suggests that it examines "How Innovators, Executives, and Investors Manage High-Tech Risks" and indeed the authors of the assembled essays do indeed (collectively) provide that examination. The material is organized within six sections: Between Invention and Innovation, Defining Risks and Rewards, Institutional Differences: Large, Medium-Sized and New Firms, Overcoming Barriers, and finally The Changing Landscape. Lewis M. Branscomb and Philip E. Auerswald co-author the Introduction and then a discussion of each of the section subjects. As co-editors, they also include essays contributed by George C. Hartmann and Mark B. Myers in Part I), Henry Chesbrough and Richard S. Rosenbloom ("The Dual-Edged Role of the Business Model in Leveraging Corporate Technology Investments in Part II), James C, McGroddy ("Raising Mice in the Elephants' Cage" in Part III), F.M. Scherer and Dietmar Harhoff ("Technology Policy for a World of Skew-Distributed Outcomes" in Part IV), and finally, Mary L. Good ("Will Industry Fund the Science and Technology Base for the Twenty-First Century?" in Part V. Branscomb and Auerswald also provide an excellent "References" section as well as a brief but informative section "About the Contributors" in which the reader is guided to additional reference sources.

As Branscomb and Auerswald explain in their Preface, this book is the result of a joint Harvard-MIT Project on Managing Technical Risk sponsored by the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). There were two workshops (on June 22, 1999 and then on September 17, 1999). Subsequently, Branscomb and Auerswald assembled a wealth of material (including the subsequent Report to NIST-ATP, "Managing technical Risk: Understanding the Private-Sector Decision Making Process. This book is a six-segment (or six-"chapter") essay co-authored by them, in combination with the five essays. "The chapters, though, are self-contained, so that they can be read sequentially without the contributed essays."

Later, in the Introduction, they explain that their objective is "to map the very specific boundary that lies between invention (an idea) and innovation (a product)....[in process exploring and developing several themes such as] successful innovations are rare, and the rewards must compensate for the risks; there are many ways to fail: technical risks and market risks are closely related; innovation themes are the key to resolving the tension between the rarity of success innovation and the need for a dependable sequence of innovations; there are serious financial, technological, and institutional gaps in the U.S. system of innovation; the pace of development is accelerating and is changing the innovation system; and government institutions, state and federal, must be seen as part of the fabric of social capital on which the innovation system rests." Obviously, no single essay (or even an extended essay such as that which Branscomb and Auerswald co-authored) can possibly address all or even most of these themes. The achievement of this book is that, to varying degrees, each of the contributors, including Branscomb and Auerswald of course) participates in a group collaboration to formulate the aforementioned "map." By the end of this remarkable book, is the map complete? No. Far from it.

In their concluding remarks, Branscomb and Auerswald suggest that, in the century now underway, "creative destruction will continue to be a public as well as private imperative. Yet we must recognize a serious political obstacle: the strong reluctance of some to having the federal government share private firms' costs for early-stage, research-based innovations. Schumpeter's phrase 'creative destruction' carries with it the implication that whenever there are innovation winners, there are likely to be losers -- losers who may complain to their political representatives if government agencies are seen as the instruments of their destruction, however creative it might be for the economy as a whole." Certain institutional deficiencies (both public and private) must be ameliorated so that the investment of the required energies and resources "will ensure continued innovative productivity for at least a century to come." Thanks to Branscomb, Auerswald, and their distinguished associates, public officials and corporate executives now have at least the beginning of a "map" to guide and inform what must be collaborative initiatives.

This is a great book to read for anyone who is concerned with rampant, poorly planned suburban growth in the United States. Mr. Lewis's 23 Circle Cities plan and his Regional Design Process provide the answer to most of our conservation and environmental problems.

When Larry Levis, author of The Wrecking Crew and The Widening Spell of Leaves, died unexpectedly in May of 1996, he left behind Elegy, a collecion of twenty poems. Readers will recognize the style of Levis. His poems are labyrinthine and digressive in a way that many readers might find off-putting, but his associative peregrinations do little to detract from the overall power of his work. Readers will find the same themes they have come to expect from Levis: death, ecstasy, and human indifference. Reading Levis' work is like witnessing a car accident--a particularly bad one--your own.

If we, the reader, are skeptics and believers of the possibility of art, if we imagine that there is another space language occupies outside of that small room that is our lives, if we are willing to accept ironies and unwillingly acknowledge the tragedy that has always been the recurring theme of the individual, then this book is the past, the present, and future of our desire to live. It's hard to comprehend that there can be anything so miserable as a wish to live forever or anything so beautiful as two old horses named Anastasia and Sandman, but Larry Levis is one of the greatest poets in the American language and culture because of his ability to texture language and improvise narratives so fluid that the reader understand and arrives at that place where all words and all stories begin and end. That place being the middle or the ever-present present that exists when a word is spoken or read and the mind attempts to find the object, the meaning, or the example for what that word represents. Or that ever-present that becomes the present as the story teller remakes the story so that it is again something real and intangible and we experience it because it is there and we do not experience it because it is not there. I don't know how else to explain the book and each poem that invites the reader to examine mortality without the immediate allusion to death but the difficult exercise of life and the ironies it weaves around us. It is impossible to read this book and not feel completely desperate, lost, and in want of every moment of passion we've ever owned and lost to circumstance, fear, the idea of being embarressed in front of our peers. Even the depraved moments we've had in our lives seem worthwhile in the language, story, and voice of this book that is so much of heart of its author that it remains a ghost behind its words. And if you've ever wanted to be bridge your life as an adult to your lost childhood, if you've ever wanted to be invisible, or drive as fast as your car could go, or found yourself talking to a horse, a tree, an empty page that replies without sympathy, without comfort, and even mocks you in its silent and indifferent manners, then this book might remind you of how it felt to have so many desires with nothing but your hands to carry them with.

At first glance, this might seem like a good textbook. However, after having to deal with it for 3/4 of a semester, I've learned to not judge a book by its cover.

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!)...

First I need to explain my background: I only knew a little about databases and SQL in general, but I knew the topic was rather complex and very broad. Since I wanted to understand how transactions are implemented I decided to find a book on them and stumbled upon this book; I am glad I did.

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.

Database and Transaction Processing by Philip M. Lewis, et al. is written as a multi-purpose textbook and practical reference guide for software engineers. One can use this book both as an undergraduate introductory course in database theory and design, as an advanced graduate-level course in databases, or as a graduate level course in transaction processing.

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.