I was hoping this would be the sequel to the awesome beginners asp database book by John Kauffman. It was not even close. This book trys to cover so many platforms that it ends up not covering anything very well. The examples are terrible and confusion will set in after the second chapter. I have found that with Wrox books, if there is more than one person on the cover, then it will stink up the place.

My favorites were Section 5,7 and 8. The case studies were okay. Good cover on MTS and Novell Directory Services with ASP.

As a reviewer for this book I have read the book from cover to cover. The strong point about this book is that it covers many different aspects of data access. If you are somewhat new to ASP this book will show the ropes on ADO, XML and how to mix data from many different sources. If you are an experienced developer this book covers many areas that will interest you - data warehousing, the use of several different DB other than the very familiar SQL Server and non-realtional data sources. I have taken my copy of this book to work and everyone wants to borrow it.

This is the worst book I've ever read!

First of all, there is nothing advanced in this book! Each chapter tries to cover one aspect/tech with 75% basic features. The other 25% usually is sample codes which you may not be interested at all.

There are many chapters which should not be in this book. For example, the chapter covers "Visual C++ with SQL server" is full of ODBC API functions, nothing specific about SQL Server 7. Another chapter for "Microsoft COM/DCOM" is nothing but a bad whitepaper for COM/DCOM. You can get a lot better idea of COM/DCOM by reading the white paper by Don Box. And the list goes on...

This book has 13 authors - 1 from Canada, 1 from Australia, the other 11 are from at least 9 states of US! I don't think it's possible for readers to expect a consistent style/content from a book like this.

It does cover, or tries to cover, "integrating SQL Server 7 with VB, Transact-SQL, Visual C++, Visual InterDev, legacy system data from Oracle, Sybase, and Access", as stated by the editor/authors. With 30 pages on each topic, full of basic features/introduction, maybe a couple of tricks, it does not "offer depth and breadth of coverage not found in any other book on the market" (as stated by editor/authors) at all!

I believe the only usage, if any, of this book is for beginners to get an idea of some of the technologies people are using with SQL Server.

The authors claim in the preface that the book covers undocumented facts and tips for SQL Server 7. Nothing could be farther from truth considering that the book is not even up to date in coverage of the newer areas. Microsoft's strategic direction for data access is going to be OLE-DB(Object linking and embedding database, as the book says!!), yet they devote more than 150 pages to the drab ODBC.

The boook is very good to beginners. Without source code, reader is hard to practice.

By bringing his own non-Christian agenda to these stories of Celtic saints, John Matthews has created an inaccurate, unsatisfying, and impolite book.
Neo-pagans are as interested in reclaiming Celtic roots as are Christians. But Matthews has gone too far. In this book he takes the lives of Christian people and de-Christianizes them, making them nothing more than spiritual archetypes or the heroes of charming folk tales. Although his prose is charming and his selection of twelve saintly subjects is good, I can not recommend this book to anyone who is interested in encountering the saints as they really are.
He works hard to make sure you never find out they are Christian. For example, in his re-telling of St. Brendan's story, Matthews several times has Brendan and his monks trusting themselves "to the rhythms of the sea," but never once trusting themselves "to God."
Another example is his treatment of St. Canair. The original story is quite short, one small page-full. There is no reason to leave out any detail. St. Canair has a vision directing her to St. Senan's island which is to be her "place of resurrection." St. Senan turns her away at the edge of his island since he does not allow women on it. They have a debate, in which St. Canair clinches her case by saying that "Christ died for women as well as for men." Matthews omits this line, although it is the crux of her argument. There is nothing to indicate a Christian context for the story at all.
In fact, in the four stories I read before I got fed up, he omits anything that indicates that these peole were Christians. Naturally, I object to this as a Christian and as a priest. But I object to it as a polite human person, also. I would not expect a writer to write about a great Buddhist as if he were not Buddhist, or about Muslim saints as if they never mentioned Allah. To rejoice in the holy people of another tradition is fine; but to appropriate them is another matter entirely. To do so denies them of what they held to be most important and misses their own chosen purpose of their lives.
That is the bulk of my complaint with the book. The fact that he claims, in the introduction, that women celebrated the Eucharist is just an annoyance. As beautiful as the idea is, as much as many people may want it to be true that there were femal Celtic Christian priests celebrating the Mass, and in spite of a very few vague hints, there simply is not one drop of evidence to justify a bald statement that it happened. And that is what Matthews says, with no documentation or proof. No worthy cause is helped by shoddy or deceitful scholarship.
I do not recommend this book at all.

i think john mathews does what is necessary and returns the data where it belongs............in pre-christian hands......and hearts...........people like <> have a chip on the shoulder........no joy........typical xtian.........a dying species......pretending to be progressive.......but still too pro-fish.....jeez.........what about uuuuuuuus. o yeah, where's yer email mr. frseanl..............

John Matthews presents this as a source book for those wishing to be druids today. He gives the impression that this book will give you accurate information about what the druids were like. However, what he has collected is a number of essays and excerpts that tell you what antiquarians and occultists from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries *thought* druids were like. The scholarship is outdated, though it may be of interest to those studying the druidic revival as a sociological or historical event. If you are interested in learning what is truly known about the druids, rather than an imaginative depiction, I recommend Piggott's _The Druids_ or Miranda Green's _World of the Druids_. Those books provide all the essential information and direct you to other sources for further reading. For an insightful study of the image of druids through the ages, see Leslie Ellen Jones' _Druid, Shaman, Priest._

I believe the previous review is somewhat "misguided" in representing this interesting book. Yes, it does contain "outdated" and "antiquarian" sources, but the author/editor clearly states why he is using these sources and leaves it up to the reader to dwell on what is said but more importantly what is NOT being said to draw their own conclusions if there are to be any. Since there is no written source(s) from the actual time of the Druids (as far as we "know" it was all oral, passed from teacher to student), all we have to go by is what has been written or passed down, but this information and more is already in all of us if we wish to see. No book can really tell you anything absolute about any subject matter, but it can be a guide.
I would recommend this as well as any book by the author of the Foreward, Philip Carr-Gomm, and his late mentor, Ross Nichols.

What a waste of money, If you read the Matthews work seriously you'll already have the three books that this book is pulled from.
If you don't read their work seriously the book is disjointed and dry.
Sadly the newest thing about the book itself is a nice cover and a few new drawing that look great. The drawing are repeated in the book wasting space,and the cover is destroyed when you try to take the shrink-wrap off that it ships in. I can understand the reason for the shrink wrap, if I saw this book in a store I would never of bought it. With the wrapping you can be fooled into thinking this is a new piece of work.
I would strongly suggest spending money on either the three book set the Matthews have done, (Sourcebooks for Druids, Seers, and Bards) or buying a more "user-friendly" book on the basics. In either case don't waste the money on this watered down version.

A Compilation Book drawn from his first three books in the "Source Book" series (The Druid Source Book, The Celtic Seers' Source Book, and the Bardic Source Book), Secrets of the Druids is a somewhat scaled back (abridged) tour through the scholarly trilogy.

This text covers writings from the Classical commentators, Celtic Folklore, various stories and interpretations regarding the Druids, Seers and Bards of Celtic & Gaelic tradition, in that order.

Since this book is a compilation geared toward a general audience, it lacks many of the footnotes and details in the original three books, so you have to refer to the original texts to find many of the references or sources for the material. There is also no index, which is rather annoying, as it makes it very difficult to find material in the book when you're searching for it.

"Secrets of the Druids" is geared for a general audience, rather than for scholarly study/reference, and it highlights what the author considers the best of his works in one concise, easier to read (i.e., "less dry") source book. It would be an excellent introduction to Druidic, Seer and Bardic studies if the footnotes and an index were included, but their absence is definitely noticed. As it stands, there is a lot of interesting information in this book, but you have to search elsewhere to find out where much of it comes from.

I definitely prefer the individual three source books over this compilation for the footnotes and index this text lacks, but this book has done a good job at putting the best of Matthew's original works in one book, and it is very affordable, making it a reasonably good introduction Druid, Seer & Bardic lore, if you don't mind doing further research, and can keep track of where everything is. But, if you want footnotes and references to source materials, you won't find them here.

Unfortunately, if you've already read the other volumes, you will also find little new material is covered in this compilation. It's a compilation, nothing more.

As a fairly serious student of John and Caitlin Matthews many works, I must say I was rather disappointed by this latest one. As has been previously stated, the material has already been covered in his three volume series of sourcebooks. Besides that, the material is, in my opinion, poorly arranged and incredibly dull. Add to this the fact that many of the sources are questionable in both authenticity and scholarly value, and you have a poor book from an otherwise outstanding author. If you have need of an impressive looking reference book, then by all means pick this book up. If you're looking for an exciting read on the Druids, this is not it.

Geoffrey Matthews' and Byron Moldofsky's beautiful cartography is destroyed by the greatest error an atlas publisher can make--spreading the maps across two pages. The results are not just ugly; some information is lost in the crack.

Matthew Smith clearly has a good heart and a thankfully straightforward prose style, accentuated by his mercifully short chapters which get right to the point without bogging down in unnecessary detail.
Unfortunately, his book will disappoint all but those few readers who don't already know the basics of JFK assassination conspiracy theory.
Smith posits a none-too-original theory about Lee Harvey Oswald's mysterious trip to Mexico two months before the president's killing and he expresses ideas about Jack Ruby that could only come from a non-American unfamiliar with the 1960s' dominance of the Mafia in major U.S. cities. The author lists Mary and Ray LaFontaine's excellent "Oswald Talked" in his bibliography, but makes no mention of its major revelations including the fact that Ruby AND Oswald were involved in a major arms heist from nearby Fort Terrell earlier in November 1963.
Smith presents rehashed and hackneyed analyses of oft-surveyed assassination details such as the botched autopsy, the shooting of Officer Tippit, the suspicious deaths of many witnesses, the "pot shot" at Gen. Edwin Walker and the Garrison probe.
With the help of a European computer graphic wizard, Smith prints several pages of Dealey Plaza "3-dimensional" drawings purportedly proving that shots originated from the Grassy Knoll. There's no doubt they did -- all we have to do is watch Zapruder's film and read the testimony of more than four dozen witnesses who were there that day, including Jackie Kennedy who had to crawl on the BACK of the Lincoln to retrieve part of her husband's head -- but Smith's computer graphics and accompanying text are simply dizzying.
Perhaps Smith's most eye-opening, most harrowing story is told by airplane mechanic Hank Gordon, who recalls working at Red Bird airfield in Dallas that awful Friday afternoon, and how Kennedy's murder had been brazenly predicted by a Cuban military pilot there.
The best thing in Smith's book by far is the Foreward by Jim Marrs (author of Crossfire and Rule by Secrecy, both highly recommended). The longtime JFK researcher aptly scolds U.S. citizens, and especially its corporate-controlled media, for letting the murder of our president go uninvestigated, unsolved and unpunished. George H. W. Bush was in Houston on Nov. 22, 1963 (See Bruce Adamson's "1,000 Points of Light") and he alerted the FBI to some suspicious character there...Bush Sr., the oil magnate, may have employed Oswald's "friend" George deMohrenschildt...and Bush Sr. headed the CIA in the 1970s, just in time to shred plenty of paper that might otherwise have fallen into the hands of the Church or Rockefeller committees or, worse yet, the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
As Marrs points out, any country that just rolls over and lets its president die like a dog in the street deserves all the Bushes it gets.