This charmingly frenetic little book is by the gentleman who also penned the saccarine "Barbar" series, but you'd never know it. By the looks of it, it is quite expensive to find this out-of-print book, but for those who presevere, a true treasure awaits. The One Pig With Horns is, well--the only pig with horns. He has a big blue coat, a rifle, anger-managerment problems, and he struggles with self-hated, gender confusion and age regression issues. This may be the most hilarious and scary children's book ever. Had de Brunhoff just discovered acid? The big blocky illustrations add to the charm. Find this book--you won't regret it. But you'll probably want to look it over carefully before you read it to the kids. My little brothers and sisters loved it, but this deep gaze into an angry pig's psyche may be too far-out or too weird for some.

And this book captures that essence. As with most books combining different stories, not every one did it for me, but most of them did. My favorite was about two men who sit next to each other on a plane and have to whisper to each other and be very discreet.

This book is a wonderful reference for fiction writers, military modelers, and anybody else who is interested in World War One uniforms. The color photographs are far better than the usual paintings or black-and-white photos, and the evolution of the uniforms of the major combatants is quite interesting. I would have liked more stuff about the minor combatants, such as Serbia, Romania, Japan, et. al., as well as more Austria-Hungary, but on the whole, this book does what it sets out to do, and since it is geared toward an English-speaking public, the emphasis on the Western Front is not out of place.

The cookie spec is only a few pages long...for a reason.Cookies just aren't that complicated. You simply don't need a book ofthis length to figure out how to use them. A short web-based tutorial is more than enough.

While the beginning of the book does a decent job of dispelling some cookie myths, it is, understandably, a little out of date already.

I did have a couple of objections to the book. It should have had a companion CD with the codes or a web site to go to.

Also, the proliferation of typographical errors (half a dozen or so in just the first 60 pages) is unacceptable for any book let alone something of this nature (McGraw-Hill...are you listening???). That's another reason why a companion CD is necessary. I would not spend time on code I don't trust. I'd never know if it was my typing ability....or the code that was wrong.

With the growing interest in privacy and consumer sentiment about the tracking of their browsing behavior, understanding cookies and their role in an internet browsing session has a broad audience. St Laurent serves this audience well with an engaging book written in an accessible style. He has an interesting knack for finding the right balance of technical depth and contextual breadth for his topic. Although the book is focused on cookies and the need for managing state in the potentially stateless world of the web, it also represents a good primer on browsers, web servers, and related matters. He uses a number of simple scripting exercises that almost anyone can do. The examples really help the reader understand by doing rather than just reading. I have recommended this book to a number of "technically challenged" colleagues who have consistently given me the feedback that they not only gained a good perspective on what cookies are used for, but walked away with a better overall understanding of how the web works. The only reason I can't give this book 5 stars is that it is two years old, and so much has happened since it was published, that it already needs a second edition! Nonetheless, it is a great resource for a wide audience.

Some people appear to really like this book. It has received many glowing reviews, but I can only shake my head in disagreement. This book is a dud -- too much text, and not enough practical advise or code examples.

The author could not adequately describe how to use basic XML components such as Document Type Definitions (DTDs), and failed to show how Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be used to display XML on the web.

If you are a web programmer or need to do something useful with

XML, look elsewhere. This is not the book for you. In fact, I'm selling this book. Wanna buy it? I'll use the proceeds to purchase "Beginning XML" by Kurt Cagle. That book looks promising.

I heard this author speak about XML and bought the book since he convinced me. Having purchased the book, I understand the excitement. Four introductory chapters eased me into XML while giving enough detail for me to be assured of the feasibility of XML. The next 8 chapters add detail, lots of detail, with sometimes amusing, frequently useful examples. I actually enjoyed reading XML: A Primer instead of just pushing through it to reach the end. I would definitely tell anyone who's interested or simply curious to check this out: it would open doors to organization of documents as well as styles of web design.

The recent book by Simon St. Laurent brought me really delectable reading about things I have never heard before. Nonetheless, it tremendously instigated my interest in this field. As for the content of his book, I highly value very comprehensible style with many straighforward examples and even more references to websites. The book is not just a primer - I consider it small beginner's encyclopaedia to the future of web. We may wish more such books by him, e.g. about CSS and topics related to XML documents formatting. If I could dare to evaluate the book in brief, I would say: well done!

It's very obvious this book is written by a staff. In attempting to hold your hand from the very most basic concept of a web page, to a fully database enabled ASP site (in 500 pages??), this book passes over nearly every necessary piece of information you could need. If you already know HTML, then half of this book is already worthless to you. And the authors of this book can't seem to decide whether they perfer HTML to XML, or VBScript to JScript. Examples of all of the above are scattered throughout the book, and leave you wondering which one you should know. Not to mention the "article style" format of this book, where each concept is intrduced and concluded in a 2 page block (whether the concept has been fully explored or not, they're gonna fit it into two pages), and right when you think you're going in one direction with ASP, they come in with an article about XML, and you're scratching your head again. My advice: if you know HTML, and you want to really learn how to program Active Server Pages, and not just scratch the surface, get a book on VBScript (not JScript) with more depth and less breadth.

The book on a whole was very informative. I learned quite a bit about ASP from reading it. The authors spend a lot of time towards the beginning of the book on XML and I'm not really sure what the connection between the two are. It almost seems like they should've written a separate book on XML rather than including it with this one. Also, I found quite a few typos throughout the book in the text and some of the code examples. Luckily I'm familiar enough with html that I was able to catch them, but for a beginner the errors could be really confusing.

The books was very helpful in my programming. I used many of the examples from book in my code. I think that if you are a beginner wanting to learn some Server side scripting this book will be an excellent place for you to start. Thanks

The book explains, as other XML books do, the basics of XML. Discussion in this book is mainly focused on how to use SAX parser to read XML data and there is no discussion on DOM. The contents, specifically the examples in the book are not really helpful to "build" applications but understand how one might use a SAX parser to parse an XML document.

A good "101" book for someone trying to understand how to use Java and XML.

In my opinion, the most important tools for building XML applications are DOM and XSLT. This book covers neither of them. It only covers SAX and CSS which are poor substitutes. While SAX has some advantages over DOM, it does not help with outputting new XML which is a common need.

I bought "Building XML Applications" expecting a ractical hands-on approach, a demonstration of XML capabilities by way of actual examples. And while I found the book to be, in general, technically useful, the book is weighed down by a writting style that is, at best, verbose and redundant. There is so much of this stylistic padding that it becomes rather tedious to get past the crud. I understand writers sometimes get paid by volume, but if you have nothing to say, say it! Overall, a good source book (as long as you don't try to actually read it).

I was very disappointed in this book. I expected a deluxe photographic retrospective on the work of one of the greatest fashion designers of this century. Instead, the focus of the book is on "fashion photography" and not on YSL's work. The photos are "artistic," which means they are often murky, blurry, dark, weird, and even violent (especially two Terry Richardson photos of "dead" models--one made up to look as though she were slashed to death).

This book will not satisy anyone who wants a good look at YSL's output over the past 40 years. If you are a fan of "fashion photography," you might like this book. If you are a fan of YSL, you will not. I wish I hadn't bought it.

The photography is decent the majority of the time. There are some really weird photos where you can't see a thing, and there is more than one occasion where there is nudity. I would not call this great photography, and I wish it had been more focused on the couture and not the models.

The title of this book is Yves Saint Laurent: 40 Years of Creation, but the main focus of the book is the designer's work from the 1990s. There is very little from earlier. This was fine with me as I prefer the work from the 90s, but, if you want a true retrospective on ALL his work, this book is not it.

What a good idea to have shown the relation between this great designer and those great photographers since he was the first couturier that understood the power of photography in fashion. What I liked the most is the mixture between those young artists and their predecessors. I recommend this book to anyone who loves fashion, photography and the way these two interact.

The book does not focus on the "Scientific and technical" side (only 1/3 of the chapters). Maybe that is why the subtitle has disappeared from the cover. Chapters 1-9 and 21-24 are generalities about XML and XML-aware applications. These would have been much clearer if the authors omitted to present all these useless options such as PUBLIC identifiers. Chapters 10, 11 and annex A paraphrase the MathML specifications. The MathML specs, freely downloadable online, are unusually clear themselves so the book does not bring much. I would have liked a word about the XSIL format, an index for the CD, and a correct table of content. I understand that if the authors had taken the time to write a well focused and pedagogical text, it would have been obsolete before publishing. Yet I am still looking for a book on XML for scientists.

Because the topic is changing so quickly, it is difficult to publish a current book on XML. Even with this disadvantage, the book gives the reader the information needed to understand how XML works, what its potential is, and generally how to implement it. I have two negative comments:
1. The book is a too cursory with emerging technologies which will be the mainstay of the technology: DOM, XSL, XSLT, SAX. These parts are critical for implementors and should have been discussed more thoroughly.
2. For a book on markup, they should have gotten the table of contents marked up correctly.

On the whole, an excellent book. Very readable.

A savagely funny book. A must read for the Christian far right. Save your time. Save God's time. Learn to hone your skills as a lean, mean, prayin' machine. In this fast pace age of instant information and on demand media access, why waste your time - or God's, with meaningless, time consuming dribble. "Prayer and the Diagrams of Force" will teach you the practices and principles of parsimony when seeking devine intervention.

Everyone drives -- but few drive like the NASCAR drivers. This book on prayer may help turn you from a regular-praying Christian to a 200-MPH prayer machine!

Mr. Laurent's dissection of the clumsiness of the average prayer, and his tune-up tips for prayer efficiency can help us all toward God's Grace. Following his tips is like pouring carb cleaner in your prayer tank -- it cleans a lot of gunk out of the pipelines, and gives your prayer more horsepower, torque, and most important in this day and age, more MPP (Miles Per Prayer.)

If you feel your prayers have been answered sluggishly, this book could put you back in the race. Read it, and I'll race you to the finish line!