This volume is very good at covering how the human visual system operates and how that affects the artist and art viewer. It's not too dense with abstruse scientific detail and it contains lots of good examples and demonstrations. The writing style and
organisation of the book are also clear.

On the whole, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the visual arts, although the scope of the book is not large.

Some teasers on the back cover:

"Why do Claude Monet's fields of flowers seem to wave in the breeze?"

"What is the secret of Mona Lisa's smile?"

The first two chapters cover some scientific fundamentals- how light and the human vision works. While this is all very scientific, every effort is made to make it understandable, with plenty of full-color diagrams illustrating the concepts. While these 2 chapters are not the easiest to read, they're not rocket science either, and provide a valuable foundation for the rest of the book. Not essential but VERY useful.

Things start to get interesting toward the end of the 2nd chapter, when we start to understand what a red/green colorblind person sees. But the best stuff starts to come in the third chapter ("Luminance and Night Vision"). Plenty of interesting illustrations are provided in this chapter (like red cherries in a blue bowl, where the cherries appear brighter or darker than the bowl depending on the ambient light, or flickering polkadots), and continues until the rest of a book, making it a truly fascinating read.

Oh, and the explanation on Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile is very convincing.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in both visual art and science.
I also recommend it to anyone who's interested in science and how things work- you'll appreciate some art pieces a lot more after reading this book.

This is a really neat book but the title is a misleading. It doesn't cover all visual art but concentrates on oil painting. The author is a neurophysiologist at Havard Med who can actually write intelligbly, entertainingly and accessibly about her field and how it intersects with 2 dimensional art. It is not an easy read. The book is chock full of visual illusions, detailed illustrations, carefully chosen paintings from the last 500 years and quotations from the scientists who have studied light, color and vision. The last chapter covers electronic media in the form of computer and TV screens and was particularly good but seemed to lack integration with the rest of the manuscript. Overall, this book is delighfully dense. Take some time and savor it.

Evangelicals don't know their history. That's why they fight for the dubious notion of a renaissance of our American Christian roots. It's why they get suckered into prophecy hysteria every 15 years. It's also why they don't discuss the important and complex facets of the evolution-creation debate. Unbeknownst to many, the history of evangelical reaction to evolution is not a one-sided testament to antievolutionism. Not at all.

David Livingstone has written an important work because it teaches 3 important lessons relevant to the origins debate: 1. Evangelicals often misunderstand what is and what is not at stake in the evolution debate. 2. The issue of reconciling science and Christianity is far more complex than the either/or categories evangelicals often use. 3. History is full of valuable arguments and insights that remain relevant to the issue today. Evangelicals must look to the past as more than ammo to "disprove" evolution.

The title of this book is a little deceptive. Evangelicals have always (and rightfully) been uncomfortable about evolution. Livingstone does not tell a one-sided history. Instead, he delves into the lively intellectual response to Darwin. Especially intriguing is the reaction to evolution in Princeton. There we discover "the Fundamentals" contributor B.B. Warfield held to both a theistic evolutionary scheme of creation AND inerrancy!

Livinstone is masterful in telling the historical evangelical reaction to Charles Darwin and evolutionary thought. A must-read for anyone who is frustrated by the nonsensical rantings of modern antievolutionism.

Brilliant survey of early views of specifically Darwinian evolution by 19th century scientists and evangelical clerics, showing that originally there was not great conflict and shows why there need not be today. A must read for those who feel modern evangelicalism is a bit too strident (or perhaps just wrong) in its denunciation of evolution.

There exists a New Yorker review of this book (June 2,2003 issue). It is absolutely fascinating - the review, that is, not the book. It exposes the book as "pedestrian rehash that reads like one of the Victorian hagiographies". The book has ignored all the intervening research and accepted as fact Stanley's self-serving and now-discredited accounts. Most of the New Yorker review is about Stanley and Livingston themselves and chockful of realistic info about these fascinating and utterly dissimilar characters.

With an encompassing narrative, and detailed descriptions of people, circumstances, and places, "Into Africa" is a worthy read for simple entertainment. Learning about Livingstone and Stanley, was engrossing, and learning about their repective journeys through Africa was harrowing and at times defied belief. If ever anyone needed an example of pure determination and pursuit of a goal, and then accomplishment, this book delivers. Showing an emotional aspect, Mr. Dugard demonstrates that attaining a near impossible goal can also result in more intangible rewards, such as Stanley's maturation through his ordeal in Africa to find Dr Livingstone. If you never think history can be exciting, read this book and you will be disabused of that notion. Warring tribes, hostile natives, opportunistic chieftans, Arab slavers, constant disease and inummerable parasites (non-human), all combine to form a formidable obstacle for these intrepid adventurers.

I picked up this book after reading a glowing review of it by Bill Bryson. I'm so glad I did. It's a true page turner. The research is original and powerful and balanced, documenting the obstacles and horrors encountered by Stanley and Livingstone. I was amazed that a book packed with that much information could be such a riveting read. As one who has traveled extensively in Africa, I also thought this book captured the epic sprawl of that wonderful continent (and made me realize how brave Stanley and Livingstone were to venture in alone). This is a story I thought I knew, but realized that I knew very little about until reading Dugard's book.

I don't want this to sound anti-Christian, because I definitely am not. But the religious message gets in the way of what would otherwise be an interesting story.

I guess there are times in biography writing when the sheer magnitude of the subject overshadows the book. However, Rob Mackenzie captures this life with pure genius. As he takes us on the chronological journey of David Livingstone's life, we are deeply saddened by the utter despair of his relentless failings and hopeless circumstances, only to reach to the top and celebrate in the victory of a simple move forward. He truly captures the love and compassion that Dr. Livingstone had for a forgotten people and shames us with the recounting of his unfeigned commitment. The road to Africa's salvation is surely paved with the blood of this man and the content challenges us to dare to take that road after him. When the author describes the final scene--with David Livingstone crumpled over, dying silently while in prayer, I am in tears and like the natives, afraid to consider what to do next. I took this biography personally and I am unworthy to even walk in his shadow, you see, I am a missionary in Zambia. Every success I experience now, was properly paid for and recounted in this book.

Reading this book on David Livingstone's life has really impacted my life in an incredible way! I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to be spiritually challenged in getting the gospel of Jesus Christ out into the world. Having been born and brought up in Zimbabwe as the child of missionaries I feel that we owe so much to Mr Livingstone and many others for "sewing the seed"and giving their lives for the gospel in a beautiful but hard land.

its a good book, opens yourself on the world that is declinning in most aspects, and awares us of solutions to solve unemployment by changing society as a whole. Interseting reading.

This is a great book for those who would like to experience how Victorian men viewed Africa as well as what a great safari would have involved. As it is a day-by-day account, some of the geographical descriptions feel a little repetitive, but can be skimmed over without detracting from the story.It would be a great mistake to judge Stanley too critically by modern standards,however, or you may end up hating it from the beginning and getting nothing from it.

A consice book of orthopedics with each chapter starting with history and physical examination for a part of the body followed by a classification of Orthopedic diseases and details. Information enough for Othopedic Students to pass rotation with a high mark.

The book covers too many topics and just few are developed in deep while others are superficially introduced because not yet standardized at the time of print. The book claims it covers the following topics: XML, XSLT, DOM, DTD, SOAP, XLink, XPointer, XPath, WAP, WML...and more; but just XML, Schemas, DTDs and SOAP could almost fit the book's size.

Chapters don't follow a very logic thread and it doesn't deal enough with very relevant subjects. Wrox probably planned to make this book the XML bible but I think they are far from the target.

The XML declarative language, with its adaptability and expressive power, is continuing to become the language of choice for reporting and classifying information. XML is a formal grammar that captures the syntactic features of a document type definition, and its properties, syntax, and applications are discussed effectively in this book. It covers XML as formalized by the W3C and the authors show how to use XML in Web-based and database applications. Readers who have developed applications in HTML will probably view XML as somewhat more abstract, since the visual representation of the content of a document is not emphasized in XML. Readers are expected to have a background in HTML, JavaScript, Java, and ASP in order to read the book. Although XML can be learned by reading the W3C specifications, these documents are frequently difficult reading, and this book makes the learning of XML much easier than reading these specifications. They include the W3C specifications for XML 1.0 in an appendix to the book for the interested reader. The book is a little dated, since the W3C has been updating XML specs since the time of publication (especially with regard to schemas), but there is a 2nd edition coming out soon.

In Chapter 1, XML is introduced as a mark-up language and its inherent extensibility emphasized. This is followed by a detailed treatment of XML syntax in the next chapter, with emphasis placed on the hierarchical nature of XML. The authors do include a discussion of Processing Instructions (PIs) for users who want to use XML in this fashion.

Document Type Definitions (DTD) are the subject of Chapter 3, where the authors communicate effectively how DTDs formal grammar is used to specify the structure and permissible values of XML documents. The formal DTD structure is discussed, and the principles behind writing DTDs are effectively outlined. They also discuss the problems with using DTDs.

Data modeling with XML is discussed in the next chapter, with information modeling via static and dynamic models treated in detail, and the authors carefully distinguish these two approaches. The actual designing of XML documents is given a nice overview as well as the role of schemas in XML. This is followed in Chapter 6 by a discussion of the (tree-based) Document Object Model, which overviews how XML documents can be accessed by various programs. Some helpful examples are given on how the DOM can be used to create an XML document programmatically. An alternative way of processing an XML document is discussed in the next chapter on the (event-based) SAX interface. The authors outline in detail the benefits of using SAX rather than DOM. In Appendix B the reader will find the Internet Explorer 5.0 XML DOM 1.0 W3C specifications. In addition, in Appendix C, the specification for the SAX 1.0 interface is given.

The shortcomings of DTD are addressed in terms of XML Schemas and namespaces in chapter 7. Since this book was published, XML Schemas have reached W3C recommendation status as of Nov 2000. The authors give a good overview of namespaces and schemas, with helpful examples. This is followed in chapter 8 by a discussion of how to link and query into XML documents using the XML information set, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XML Fragment Interchange, with XLST covered in the next chapter. For database applications, the authors outline the differences between relational databases and XML documents. A very detailed treatment of how XLST transforms the source document is given, and the authors compare XLS and DOM transformations. An Internet Explorer XSL reference is included in one of the appendices of the book.

More details on the relationship between databases and XML is the subject of chapter 10, wherein the authors show how to store XML and how data can be communicated between different servers using XML. The issues involved when moving data from RDBMS to OODBMS or from Oracle to Sybase, are discussed by the authors. This is followed by an interesting discussion on how to use XML as a distributed component model for server-to-server communications via XML-Remote Procedure Call and Simple Object Access Protocol.

E-commerce applications are discussed in the next chapter, with EDI and its improvement via XML. The business markup language cXML , which allows business to business electronic commerce transactions across the Internet, is also treated in detail.

The authors then finally discuss how to render XML documents more readable and pleasing for the viewer in the next chapter using the style languages CSS and XSL. The discussion is really interesting, for the authors dig a little deeper into the foundations of style languages. The discussion of style languages as rule-based languages is particularly illuminating.

The next chapter is very interesting and its inclusion is actually very surprising, namely a discussion of the Wireless Application Protocol. The authors give an introduction to the Wireless Markup Language and WMLScript. The book ends with four useful chapters on case studies for data duality, distributed applications, a book catalog information service, and SOAP.

There are many applications of XML in many different areas, such as CellML (proprietary) used in cell biology, CML (Chemical Markup Language) for molecular chemistry, IML (Instrument Markup Language) for control of laboratory equipment, BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language) for gene sequencing, and MathML for formatting of mathematical equations. I find XML an extremely powerful approach to information reporting and I am currently developing a package called NMML (Network Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in simulation and mathematical modeling of networks, and FMML (Financial Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in the modeling of financial instruments. This book, along with the W3C specifications, has been a tremendous help in the development of these applications.

Awesome "self-teach" book. I've been programming for years, but was new to XML and needed to start using it in my applications, so I had just the very basic concepts of what XML was before I started reading. This book is very complete, gives tons of practical examples and guidelines, and provides many external references. This is the ONLY book you will need to learn XML effectively on your own.

As others have stated here, the only real downside to the book is that it repeats many concepts more than once, so it is NOT the best choice for a reference book.

I found this over-priced book to be of no use to me at all...the reader was/is expected to do ALL the work while the author offers practically no help nor any self-help roads...

This book says the same 3 things over and over again: no one can MAKE you angry, anger is a natural feeling, and you have the power to control your anger. All this is well and good, but it doesn't go more in depth than that. I found this book and its "solutions" rather trite.

I enjoyed this book because it was an easy read, not full of clinical jargon. Quite often I find self-help books to be written as "them and us", but this book does not present that way. I found it humourous, informative, easy to understand and very helpful for my anger management problems. It deals with real people and real issues that we all face at one time or another. My teen-age daughter read it and enjoyed it a lot. It allowed us to speak to issues I was not able to address in the past. I particularly liked the "move at your own pace" format. You can pick up this book at the end, the middle or the beginning and still get the answers you need. It challenged me a lot and this lead to self empowerment and personal growth. I would recommend this book to anyone who is experiencing communication or interpersonal problems because anger is usually at the root of these problems. GREAT BOOK!

The true story which this book is supposed to be telling was corroded by bias, which paved way for fictitious lies and assumptions. First and foremost, David Livingstone was not the first person to discover Victoria Falls. The native Africans who knew the Falls before him, were the ones that led him to its location.
Also, castigating Africans for not trusting and loving him at-the-first-sight was very unfair. It showed how myopic the author, (Sam Wellman), and the reviewer, (Hazel Rochman), are. Both men must be joking if they assumed that readers have forgotten that Dr. Livingstone entered Africa at a period when the aim of 99.9% of Europeans who went there was to abduct and sell Africans into slavery.
This book is dying for a revision. It will be an interesting piece if all the facts and figures are frankly accounted for.

I found this biography to be an interesting glimpse into the life of Dr. David Livingstone. Having no prior knowledge of this Missionary to Africa, I found this to be a very informative book. With admirable strength and courage balanced with humility, all supplied by the Holy Spirit , Dr. Livingstone hiked through the wilderness of Africa, intent on showing the natives the love of Christ. By his kindness and fairness to the African tribes, and by oral preaching in their own languages, he brought the saving news of Jesus Christ to them. He helped to heal animosity between neighboring tribes, and sought to replace the horrible slave trade with honest commerce by searching out water routes to the interior of Africa. Overall, following him through his struggles and sorrows built an attitude of respect for Dr. Livingstone and his work, making for an excellent book.

David Livingstone's life is all but forgotten in this generation that despises anything missionary or Christian but this is a shame. For Mr. Livingstone was ahead of his time in his treatment of the lovely African peoples. He treated them with sensitivity and respect in an age when most white men wanted to 'steal' the blacks and sell them into slavery or abuse them for their own greedy purposes. Livingstone showed the patience, kindness, and mercy that are required of those who heed God's calling as missionaries. Sam Wellman presents the life of this extraordinary man in layman's terms. A beautiful book about a beautiful human being and the people that his life touched.