John O'Hara is the master of 20th Century American Fiction. Matthew Bruccoli's work was so fascinating, it inspired my wife and I to make a pilgrimmage to Pottsville, Pa., O'Hara's hometown (and the "Gibbsville" of his short stories). I highly recommend this work to anyone seriously interested in O'Hara's life, and "The Gibbsville Stories," now out of print, to anyone interested in exploring "The Master."

A VERY VERY fast response seller! I like u!!

This is a very sympathetic record of Keats' letters and poems, and anyone interested in his thoughts/personality is likely to find themselves pleased.

Flambeau, Father Brown's great friend and sometime sidekick, appears in only one of the stories herein.

"The Scandal of Father Brown" - A beautiful (and married) rich woman has taken up with a distinguished poet - and Father Brown, rather than reacting as expected, appears to be providing active assistance.

"The Quick One" - Old John Raggley is a law unto himself - spending his life writing to newspapers in protest, drinking only cherry brandy because of the poor quality of all other drinks sold - but he died of poisoned brandy, all the same. Early in the story, Raggley insults a Moslem's religion to his face, when the man's teetotaler companion makes a nuisance of himself - and is overjoyed when the stranger takes him seriously, and throws a dagger at him. This closeness between enemies, when they respect each other for having principles even though they're opposites, is fleshed out more fully in Chesterton's novel _The Ball and the Cross_.

"The Blast of the Book" - Professor Openshaw, who devotes his time to investigating psychic phenomena, and thoroughly enjoys exposing fraudsters, is confronted with a singular incident resulting in the disappearance of his own clerk.

"The Green Man" - The Admiral, tricked out in his most elaborate formal uniform, is found drowned in a pond near his home.

"The Pursuit of Mr. Blue" - A private detective fails to prevent the murder of a millionaire, who's been pursued to a seaside resort. A police inspector recommends that he visit the renowned amateur, Father Brown, who sifts some interesting information from the detective's story of the pursuit. A racist epithet, thrown in casually while setting the opening scene, mars the story; the actual dismantling of the puzzle is handled cleverly.

"The Crime of the Communist" - Two philanthropists, invited to dinner at the university since they're about to endow a new chair of Applied Economics, are found poisoned in the garden after dinner - and the chief suspect is the chair of Political Economy.

"The Point of a Pin" - Father Brown, currently being awakened every morning by the start of work on a nearby construction site, is interested professionally because of a labour dispute brewing therein.

"The Insoluble Problem" - A case wherein Flambeau, in his respectable retirement from his first profession, is in pursuit of a team of jewel thieves, and brings in his old friend Father Brown.

Another fantastic work by the author of the Unknown Arthur! Very highly reccomended for Arthurian story fans. Not mainly intended for children, these stories unearth gleaming gems in the Arthurian tradition known mostly to scholars, and otherwise languishing in obscure manuscripts. Thoughtfull commentary preceeds each story, which is retold/arranged to be clear and readable, but retain the authentic components of the story and the original flavor. Nothing bad to say about it, except that there aren't more in this series!

Overall, this was a good read -- especially for existing programmers who are looking more at ADO.NET for things like architecture, usage, differences with ADO 2.x, etc... The book greatly simplified ADO.NET in my mind, and gave some great starting points in my own research.

My only problem with the book is that there are quite a few errors in the text that, in my opinion, the editors should have caught. For example, if you're new to OOP, you'll probably want to know the difference between overloading a method and overriding a function. This book on several occasions uses one term where another should have been used and vice-versa.

Overall, however, this is the best book on ADO that I've read so far...

_howard

Although this book lacks real world examples, it provides complete reference for ADO.NET, and this book has examples in both VB.Net and C#.
For ADO.NET beginners to start to write code in ADO.NET, this book is not enough. This book is for developers who already have some ADO.NET experience, and need some information about specific method or property. --Reviewed by Richard X.

Let's face it, ADO.NET introduces some brand new concepts and design philosophies that even classic ADO experts are not familiar with.

I found that this book provided me with a great ADO.NET foundation to build on. I have read many ASP.NET/WinForm development books and I am of the opinion that ASP.NET/WinForm developers will benefit from a book like this *before* diving into their ASP.NET or WinForm developement books.

After reading this book, I came to realize that the approach the John and Caitlin Matthews is using expresses the spirit of Celtic Spirituality as it presented in sources such as Celtic Heritage by Alwyn and Brinley Rees and The Gods of the Celts by Miranda Green. However, It would have been nice if John and Caitlin Matthews would have used these text as sources for their work. Much of the text expresses what is apparent in ancient Celtic religion while other aspects are off into left field. The only reason for this that I can think of is that the translations that are being used are out dated (some seem to be from the 1900s) as well as looking at late middle ages sources and saying that they come from ancient Celtic sources, which would be impossible to tell. Even with all the problems that arise with the text, it is a wonderful approach and much of what John and Caitlin Matthews express, from what I can tell, is consistent with other academic text about Celtic spirituality and religion.

The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom is, hands down, required reading for anyone interested in the primal Celtic traditions, especially of the Irish and Scottish traditions. Where John Matthews' Taliesin and the Shamanic Mysteries of Britian addresses largely a Cymric (Welsh) and British leaning, The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom is, largely, rooted in the Irish, with some exploration of folk Scots beliefs and expressions of the shamanic (as in the case of the late and well-loved Scottish seer, Eliadh Watt). As of January 2002 I consider this book to be one of the top three books on Celtic tradition, especially the visionary tradition of primal Celtic spirituality and the field of contemporary Celtic spirituality. It is a priceless addition to one's library, along with Tom Cowan's Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit, Mara Freeman's Kindling the Celtic Spirit. For a more classical exploration of these same themes I recommend The Silver Bough, by F. Marian McNeill.

If you never again by any books on this subject you must have this book. Reliable source document translations that are accessible to the average reader are thin on the ground and this is one of the very best. BUY THIS BOOK! I refer to it repeatedly and it never lets me down. An excellent book and an excellent value.

I'm normally a big fan of the Wrox books. They generally do an excellent job of selecting authors and editors. This book, however, was a huge disappointment for me.

Others have said, "It's full of samples." While this is true, many of the samples are for very obvious functionality, whereas very fundamental and complex functionality ends up getting minimal treatment (an example is the Fill() methods for the Data Adapter). While there's more written explanation of the Fill() methods, it is sorely inadequate and the samples are very basic. I would expect much more coverage and probably even an appendix at the end to cover it in more depth.

For the most part, I find the book no more useful than the SDK documentation and samples that you get for free. For a book with 10 authors, I'd expect a lot more insight and knowledge to be passed on and sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Even for the "Reference" books Wrox does, they normally do a much better job of passing along great insight from the authors. If you need treeware docs for ADO.NET, then I guess this book will do but personally, I'm sticking with the online documentation.

This book is the single most valuable book I bought from WROX in terms of being able to borrow ADO.net code for my application.

ADO.net is the most undocumented are of .net and this book offers hundreds of code samples. The COM Interopability chapter is very good and introduces he obcure Recordset fill and how to use ADOMD from .net!

The Transaction chapter is way too small and incomplete. Another flaw is the fact that the book is supposed to cover VB.net and C# but they were sloppy and it is not a 50/50 split. Often they forget the VB.net samples. You would think their editors could count and make sure all examples come in pairs.

I think it is a great buy but I hope they get all VB.net examples in 2nd edition and a re-orgnization to be more task oriented.

Wrox lists this book as a "Programmer's Reference". In a reference I look for detailed information and code samples demonstrating usage all of which should be more extensive than what can be found in the help files or online API. This book succeeds very well as a reference providing a great deal of information that you will want to have nearby while you are coding. The book starts off with a description of ADO.NET which I found to be the weakest part of the book. This section doesn't quite put all the pieces of ADO.NET together in a meaningful way. The remainder of the book is excellent. Each of the key ADO.NET classes (DataSet, DataReader, DataAdapter, etc.) and their constructors, properties, methods and events are discussed in detail with code samples in both VB.NET and C#. Each key class or concept (data relationships, transactions, XML mapping, etc.) is given a chapter in the book. The explanations are much more useful that what you will find in the online help files. Besides covering SQL and OLE, the book also covers the ODBC classes which are not documented in the help files included with VS.NET. In a reference the index is important and here the index is good although some entries seem to be off a page or two. If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to using ADO.NET you will want to look at other books. If you need a detailed reference book then this should be your first stop.

John Matthews is a gifted wordsmith, and he has written many books. However, what he writes is not handed down from any Celtic tradition. He has taken Michael Harner's core shamanism and, in place of North American Indian images, Matthews has substituted a variety of unrelated motifs and images from Welsh, Irish, and Arthurian tales. For example, Matthews substitutes the "crane bag" of Mannanan Mac Lir (an Irish figure) for the medicine bag that Harner adopted from various indigenous peoples. There is no evidence that Irish religious figures ever had "crane bags," and the symbol is not found in any other Celtic tradition. Yet on Matthews goes, mixing images and symbols from various eras and traditions, ignoring their integrity and twisting them to suit his purposes. Almost any meditative technique will produce certain results, and you may find that Matthews' techniques (in this book and others) work for you. However, what you will be using is an adaptation of Harner's core shamanism, not anything passed down from Celts of any tradition. You might as well read Harner's book _The Way of the Shaman_ or take a course from him and substitute whatever symbols appeal to you. For accurate examination of shamanic elements and behaviors in various Celtic traditions, see L.E. Jones' _Druid, Shaman, Priest_.

John Matthews is an important New Age writer on Celtic and Arthurian topics, and has written some valuable books on Celtic 'Shamanism'. Unfortunately, this book is essentially a reworking of Michael Harner's 'core shamnism', dressed up in some Celtic motifs. While that approach may be useful for beginning students, it shouldn't be mistaken for actual Celtic practice.

Matthews offers a concise introduction into the realm of Celtic traditions. This book is especially useful, not only to those who are new to the "old religions", but also to those who are looking for a more solitary approach. My only problem with the text is the generally phallocentric viewpoint of the material, and those who endeavor to read this title should take that into consideration.

I have been doing actionscripting in Flash 4 and it seems that since a lot of tags were deprecated (outdated) in Flash 5 so I have to learn new methods employing actionscript in Flash 5.

I am not a programmer but a web designer, employing programming knowledge in HTML including CSS and minimal javascript so my knowledge on the object-oriented model used in Flash 5 is minimal.

This book requires you to know javascript at least. It tells you to read the actionscript reference in case you don't know any, but even as I did read and tried to understand the reference so many times, the book wasn't as helpful. It leaves me in the dark because even though it explains what those custom functions are for, it does not explain why the order of the functions are in such a way such that you would require one to initialize first, etc. etc.

I'm thinking even if I'm an expert in javascript, I would not need this book because the methods employed would be the usual ones anyway.

So if you're a beginner in programming, you'll find that this book is not helpful at all, leaving you in the dark on the "whys" of the script. Or if you're expert programmer, you probably won't need this book because the methods employed are the usual stuff anyway.

I know the basic of Flash 5 and have been really wanting to learn the more complex areas but have had trouble finding a source that explained them well and most importantly gave solid, real life examples to back them up.

I umed and erd about buying this book, but from the moment i got it any reservations were dismissed. It if fantastically done, well laid out, colour is well used to make example text stand out. What is so good is that anything they try to teach you has a very solid, real life example to go with it, and you are given the start .fla files as well as finished ones, if you want/need to have a sneak peak at what it will look like. It is very usefull having the finished article available as if you don't quite understand what is meant from the text, being able to look at an finished example it helps it all fall into place.

Although there is something in this book for all levels of users it is more aimed at people who already know the basics and who want to leverage Flash more effectively in the production process. It covers basic to advanced levels of object-orientated scripting, Flash application development, client-server interaction, rich media content development and of course animation.

to quote,'It is built around projects and intergrated techniques, rather than individual techniques of Flash..'

ActionScript is the heart of Flash, and the power it has is the big reason why it destroys any of its competition, so if you are wanting to learn Flash, ActionScript is a must, and if you want to learn ActionScript you could so alot worse than this book. Well done to the authors, a brilliant example of what other books should be like!

I don't normally write book reviews, but when I saw all the bad reviews for this book, I had to speak up. I've gotta think that the majority of one star reviewers on this book are either from competing book authors or their friends. This book has been out and away the most valuable Flash 5 book I purchased this year. The code on the CD, alone, has paid for the book probably a dozen times for me. I did do differently than the authors intended though. Instead of starting each chapter with the unfinished or "start" files (I think), I just followed along with the chapters using the finished files because I usually didn't have time to do it the other way.

I've checked out most of the Flash 5 books available and with the exception of parts Colin Moock's book-which is more of a technical reference book, Flash 5 Magic is the only real world application book available. I don't know what I would have done for several of my jobs this year if I didn't have Flash 5 Magic.