E. Michael Mendelson writes: The subject of this extremely well written and readable book is Santiago Atitlan, the largest town of the Tzutujil Indians on one of the world's most beautiful volcanic lakes: Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The town has long been famous with tourists and with anthropologists who have been studying it since at least the Nineteen Twenties. One of the principal deities in the Maya-Christian religious syncretism of Atitlan-the Maximon or Mam-even made Time Magazine coverage when it was attacked by Catholic clergy in the 1950s.

In a sense, the attempted conquest of the Maya and Maya resistance to it have continued from the 16th century Spanish Conquest down to the 20th century Civil War (in most ways a war against the Maya Indians) and Carlsen does a brilliant job of investigating four centuries of both continuity and change. In the last half century, a major crisis has been developing on the lake due to increased population and shortage of land. The move of so many local Maya from agriculture to commerce may be the reason why, Carlsen argues, traditional native religion-agriculture based-is having a hard time surviving against Orthodox and Charismatic Catholicism, militant Evangelical Protestantism, and contemporary media-driven culture. Commerce is not doing sufficiently well to save the town when set in the context of Guatemalan capitalism, itself vulnerable to increasing globalization. Further undermining the situation has been the Civil War, culminating in the December 2nd 1990 massacre of civilians by the Army-though local pride in forcing the Army out the town as a result of the massacre remains strong.

While this is Carlsen's main concern here (one is sure there will be further books), he manages to include a great deal of fresh and resonant information on Atiteco traditions. There is, among much else, a wonderful chapter on the central Tzutujil concept of "Flowering Mountain Earth," linking Sun, Corn, and Humans in an ideology descended straight from the great pre-Spanish classic text Popol Vuh, as well as a condensed but most insightful essay on the continuing cult of Sacred Bundles in Atitlan. Like all good anthropologists, Carlsen achieves a delicate balance between empathetic participation and objective study. His long dedication to the town is evident in the depth and warmth of his vision. The book is blessedly free of jargon and is illustrated with a wealth of excellent photographs. It cannot be too highly recommended.

This provides the background charm for a really lovely tale about a family in distress who sticks together bravely and provides a shining example to all around them, while being aided by equally high-minded and kind folks around them.

A knock on the door at the idyllic middle class town home of the children ends with a tragedy that they can scarcely understand. But Mother is brave and despite rumors of terrible things, they make their way to a more modest home in the country, next to a railway line. The children become friends with the trains and the regular commuters who wave at them. Their fascination with the train results in a heroic rescue. Meanwhile, their situation is sometimes difficult, and they develop some remarkable strategies for getting aid. There is a happy ending.

The morals taught to the children are particularly British (helpful, kind, brave) but certainly apply to us as well. The goodness that the children spread is really a lovely message and contributes to the charm and longevity of this great favorite. Good for reading aloud.

In the intervening time, their mother, a capable and charming woman, takes her children to live in the country near a railway station, because they must "play at being poor for a while." The children handle their new situation with grace and wit, spending hours hanging about the railway station and generally keeping themselves busy, and in the process becoming fast friends with the porter, Perks, and the station master. They also become acquainted with their own old gentleman who lends a hand to help them time and again.

Bobbie is the oldest and sweetest of the children, with a longing to be truly good. Peter is the boy, who is madly in love with trains, stubbornly refuses to pushed around, and exhibits an extraordinary courage in the rescue of a baby and a young man in a train tunnel. Phyllis is the youngest, a funny, clumsy child with good intentions that often seem to go awry.

I read this book to my four year daughter. She loved it. As the adult, I enjoyed reading it. And, you'll be happy to know, it all comes out right in the end.

Refactoring is a book which details simple techniques of fixing your code to facilitate making changes.

The book's main feature is a large catalog of at least 50 refactoring patterns (presented in a similar way to Design Patterns) with a name, example, and motivation for using it. The patterns are described using UML. There are several other chapters of interest, including one on "Bad Smells" which lists many telltale signs of poor programming and how to fix them.

Maybe I'm just showing my lack of sophistication, but Design Patterns went over my head. I only "got" a few of the patterns. But this book is much more accessible to an intermediate programmer who wants to improve his coding style. If you've ever wondered how to write more maintainable code this is your book. One good thing about this book is it's directly applicable to almost every standard procedural or OO language, whereas Design Patterns are pretty much for OO programming only. Even if you are writing VBScript or Javascript for your web page you could use many of the techniques illustrated here.

Highly recommended. Buy this one.

However, Fowler doesn't stop there. He presents rationales for refactoring (with an eye towards making a case to management) and much detailed, practical insight that comes from experience, but is rarely expressed so concisely and elegantly. I also appreciated the importance Fowler placed on unit testing; in fact, using unit testing makes refactoring happen much more quickly, and leaves you with a lot more peace of mind besides.

I read the book cover to cover and enjoyed nearly every page. The book has added a lot to my value as a developer, and was a lot of fun in the bargain. I don't think a whole lot more needs to be said. Just buy it, you can thank everyone who told you to later.

Fowler suggests refactoring a program to simplify the addition of new functionality. The program should also be refactored to make it easier for human readers to understand at the same time.

He also insists that each step is small and preserves functionality, and on frequent unit testing with a comprehensive test suite.

Half of the book consists of a catalogue of refactorings. He gives each refactoring a memorable name, such as "Replace Type Code with Subclasses". He illustrates the design transformation with a pair of UML class diagrams, and has a standard set of sections: Motivation, Mechanics and Example.

The Motivation is a prose section that describes and justifies the refactoring, showing the relationship to other refactorings.

The Mechanics is a sequence of steps needed to carry out the refactoring, shown as a list of bullet points He expands on some points.

The Example is where the value of this book lies. Fowler takes a fragment of Java code, and takes us step by step through the refactoring. The code is small enough that he can show it all each step of the way without overwhelming us, but is large enough to be realistic.

The code is clear enough for non-Java programmers to follow. He explains his code well enough for the book to function as a Java tutorial where the meaning of the code is not obvious. One or two of the refactorings are specific to the Java object model, and do not apply to other languages. Other languages would benefit from similar treatment, but there are very few language-specific refactorings.

The book is very much of the Design Patterns movement, with frequent references to patterns. The aim of a factoring may be to achieve a particular pattern, or it may take advantage of a particular pattern. The book can be used as a tutorial on Design Patterns.

I have a small number of complaints. Fowler advocates the use of refactoring while studying code for a code review. One needs to be very sensitive to the feelings of the programmer here, especially if he or she is a novice. The reviewer should read the code with refactoring in mind, and possible refactorings recommended, but it is for the programmer to make the changes.

Reading this book has inspired me to refactor some of my own code. My mistakes underlined the need to take small steps, and to test frequently. I spent a day building a useful Delphi testing framework from the description Fowler gives of the JUnit testing framework. The one category of code that does not seem to lend itself to this approach is some highly coupled parsing code. While I can extract small blocks of code, they remain tightly coupled with each other, and it is hard to give them meaningful names. The answer here may be to use the top down approach of recursive descent, rather than the bottom up approach of refactoring. Perhaps recursive descent can guide refactoring. Refactoring is largely a local approach. One can almost say a pinhole approach. Sometimes a global view is needed.

In summary, I would say that this very good book would be of use to Java programmers who have some understanding and much bafflement. It is very good for us older dogs who have become a little jaded and need some new ideas and motivation.

The books follow the story of Vilmos, a twelve year old boy, Adrina, a girl coming of age, Seth and Galan, the mysterious elves, and their friends. Vilmos, a boy who's spent his whole life living a lie. Until one day he finds out that his dark power can't be gotten rid of. He's a wizard, and not just any wizard, the first human mage in a thousand years. Adrina, a girl who longs for change from her dull and boring life. Until one day the change comes and it isn't at all that she hoped for.

The characters, writing, and story in these books in superb and the entire series will leave you shocked, surprised, and eager for more. If you haven't yet read The Kingdoms this is a great time to start.

WHAT DID I LIKE MOST? The characters are great! If you let them the people in this book will become your new best friends. I loved Vilmos! He's got a lot of spunk. Adrina, Emel and Seth are other strong characters.

HOW IS THE PLOT? I enjoyed the book's plot twists. Don't let the straightforward, easy to read prose fool you. There's a lot going on in this story.

IS IT TOLKIEN? I would liken the experience to Tolkien's The Hobbit more than Lord of the Rings. Its an epic quest with 3 bands of heroes who eventually come together to battle a great evil. As a first in a series, it's a strong start, and a good start on what may be a wonderful fantasy series for readers of all ages.

IS IT THE STAR WARS OF FANTASY? My kids call it this, their friends do to. It has to do with the amount of action scenes and the good pacing. The book has plenty of battles and action for the patient reader. I like the fact that there are separate adult and children's versions. My sons have rarely finished books but they finished The Kingdoms & The Elves of the Reaches books 1 and 2 in a few days.

DO I RECOMMEND THIS? Yes, very much so. But everyone has different tastes. If you don't like it someone else you know surely will. I also find it wonderful that this book is from a small press. The little guy gets squashed too often by big corporate publishers, so it is great to see the little guy get a leg up. Great to see a BIG book from a small press.

Now my kids are waiting for The Kingdoms and the Elves book 3 due out in August. The funny thing is that I am too. According to the description, book 3 picks up where Keeper Martin's Tale left off, meaning it should be the first part of the 2nd Keeper Martin book. Heck, I'm there. You don't have to tell me any more. Beats waiting!

I'm really glad Robert took the time to make adult and children's versions of his books. I actually preferred the children's version of Elf Queen's Quest (The Elf Queen and the King books I and II) to the adult version. The children's version has a completely different organization, which makes it flow more logically (IMHO). Whatever version you choose, regardless, you're going to have fun. Fun reading it what it's all about. Enjoy! Happy, happy, happy reading.

With that said, I'm disappointed at the structure of this book. I would expect the definitions of the patterns to appear up front, and the discussions to appear after the pattern definitions.

If you've read any of Fowler's other titles, the structure of this one will come as no surprise. The first have of the book discusses the patterns in "narrative" format, and the second half presents them in reference format. If you are new to this subject, I highly recommend reading through the narrative section to understand how the patterns fit together.

If you've been involved in enterprise application development before, chances are you can simply flip to the second half of the book and start skimming the patterns. Each is only a handful of pages long and is accompanied by a description, use cases and example code.

Like other "patterns" titles, if you've been doing software development for a while you'll read the patterns and think "oh.. of course, I did that in xyz project". The patterns themselves may not be groundbreaking and chances are you've seen them in some form, but having a well documented reference of them nearby will be an asset to any software development effort.