Dear Readers, This book is a really "Soul Catching" book. It's amazing, once you start reading it, the book will grab your soul, and the first time I read it, when I finished, I felt like I was MJ! If you like "lending" your soul to a book, and you love sports, this is the book for you. See ya' later!

I love this book. It reaches deep into the soul of the reader and MJ! I'm waiting for the sequel! (hint, hint)

Finally, a book that teaches objects and Java without any procedural programming baggage!

Unlike other books that introduce objects in chapter 4 or 5 (almost as an afterthought!) and start out with the pre-object "Hello World" program, this book dives right into creating objects and manipulating them. "public static void main" doesn't even rear it's ugly head until half-way through the book, where it belongs. The included Bluej IDE ... is incredibly easy to use and it's very intuitive.

I bought a copy of this for the library at work to help my team of procedural COBOL programmers understand objects and Java. It seems to be more valuable than the other books purchased and several thousand dollars of training.

Another benefit is that the examples you write from the text are actually useful tools!

Please, seriously consider getting this book if you are starting to learn Java or just don't quite understand objects. It will spare you a lot of frustration.

This text is so refreshing. It is presented using a more contemporary
approach than any other text on the market. (Believe me I have seen
a lot of them) because its presentation is pure concept without
overburdening one with unnecessary details.

Concepts are only introduced at a level necessary to understand the
task at hand and revisited later in different contexts to deepen one's
understanding. Project programs are relevant and many issues can be
learned from reading the source code. The authors have students
designing parts of programs from the first chapter. If you want to be a
professional programmer or a software engineer this book is for you !

The text is in tutorial style using the BlueJ IDE. The BlueJ IDE is
so visual and displays a UML like diagram representing classes
and relationships in the program projects. By using the BlueJ IDE
(included on the CD along with all the coding)
one can "feel" what it means to create an object, call a method, or pass
a parameter. One of the authors is a developer of the BlueJ IDE.

One is taught how to structure a vaguely described problem into classes
and methods. The text even includes a complete case study where all
topics discussed earlier are revisited ...from application design through
design of class interfaces, to discussing many important functional
and non-functional characteristics and implementation details.
You will see reliability, data structures, class design, testing and
extensibility applied in a new context.

Do all the exercises conscientiously and you will discover what I
am discovering......this textbook is worth its weight in gold. Enjoy !

There has never been a time when interreligious understanding was more needed. And I don't have in mind only the atrocities committed at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and what seems to be, as I write, an impending war. It's trite to say, but true, that the vast geographical distances that once separated the great religions from one another have vanished, both figuratively in the sense that modern transportation and communication technologies have rendered them insignificant and literally in the sense that, given modern immigration patterns, Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and Confucianists and Sikhs are very likely to be living in the same neighborhoods with Jews and Christians. It is imperative that we learn to understand one another better.

This book is an important step in that direction. By presenting academically serious, reliable, but still sympathetic portraits of the five great religious founders, it provides a basis for genuine dialogue between the faiths. It is an excellent book. The authors are first-rate, and the writing is generally clear and occasionally even quite good.

I wish it weren't so expensive, but I hope that it will nonetheless have a large readership. I recommend it enthusiastically.

Contributions from the best contemporary thinkers provide explorations of the lives and beliefs of the five founders of major world religions: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad. These essays provide new insights into the careers of these individuals, blending biography with spiritual insights. An excellent contemporary review.

It's designed to concentrate on what makes this kind of game fun: acting out a role. Instead of getting points and improving your abilities through killing, or performing daring feats, or being lucky with the dice, you get points for making the game fun for yourself and everyone else. By building a story. And the universe is rich enough to build any possible story. Good luck Rune's Law on making a success out of something you obviously worked so hard on. Having watched this project grow up for a while now, I do wish that everyone that contributed to this project would get due credit, but there's no doubt that this work is the combined efforts of many very creative people.

Playtest Review by Shadow Sprite on 12/20/98. Genre tags: Far Future Space Wayfarer Infinity is a space game that takes place in the far-flung future. And unlike most space games coming out recently (with the exception of Last Unicorn's "Star Trek: TNG") it doesn't have the post-apocalyptic, dark future overtones. The Wayfarer universe is filled with diversified life, that is to say there are a LOT of PC races available. There's high technology, and there's Psionic Abilities, here known as Genetic Abilities or GAs. If there's any easy way to sum up the game it's this: "Star Wars" where just about everyone has the power to use the Force. Not to say that the game is a "Star Wars" rip-off, on the contrary, the writers brought in a lot of creativity and different ideas to make the game unique unto itself.

This is definitely not a beer & pretzles game, the character creation and system itself are fairly math-intensive. So much so, that one of the original packaging ideas was to include a calculator. However, it's gone through enough playtesting, and refining that they have decided including a calculator was not neccessary. ...Plus, most gamers carry calculators already (especially if they play GURPS). The combat system is chart intensive as well, bringing back memories of the Role-Master system. However, despite the high math quotent and chart reading (or perhaps, due to), the system is very well-balanced. I was actually using an editor's copy to review the game, but have been told a GM's screen with a number of the often-used charts will be available, perhaps even packaged with the game.

To be honest, I found myself surprized at liking this game so much, it has the things I don't like about so many games. It's math intensive, chart intensive, and combat almost seems miniature based. However, the game itself is put together well enough that I found myself looking beyond that and finding pleasure in the game, rekindling memories when sitting around a table gaming with dice, calculator, and miniatures was fun.

Wayfarer Infinity is simply a space game, being neither Space Opera nor a hard SF game. It's a pleasant medium between the two. But if you plan on playing, I recomend making sure your calculator is working... and you might want to dust off your miniatures as well. All I can say is "kudos" to newcomer Rune's Law for a well put together game.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

"Big Book 2" is as important a reference work as the original edition. Everyone who is a serious student of GIS needs to have access to this resource. It covers the foundations and frontiers of GI *SCIENCE* with contributions from many of the most well-known researchers in the field. A must have.

You can tell this book is writen by an engineer whom knows his work. So many books are writren by " laymen " whom don't know much about the subject But this book is well worth the cost I recommend it to anybody

The Armed Forces Guide to Personal Financial Planning is a must read for soldiers, sailors and airmen. The book begins with chapters on basic personal finance and walks through sections on buying big ticket items (cars, houses, etc..), investing, and planning for retirement. Written uniquely for service members and the different tax and pay considerations they should account for, this book is an invaluable addition to any military bookshelf.

Michael Meese is the new Deputy Head of the Department of Social Sciences and former Director of Economics at West Point. Bart Keiser is also a former Director of Economics at West Point. The Social Sciences faculty is also in the process of writing the 5th Edition, which should be coming out in a few months; so if you can wait, you'll get a more current version. But if you are in the military and are considering major changes to your financial situation in the near term, this book is well worth the investment.

I highly recommend this book for all service members.

This is probably one of the best text-style books I have seen covering asymmetric synthesis. It covers all transformations, and analyzes them with terrific transition states. I highly recommend this for advanced graduate organic classes, although the high cost.

Riversleigh is a major World Heritage listed fossil site, primarily discovered in the late 1970s in Queensland, Australia. Since the first discoveries an abundance of prehistoric Australian fauna dating from 25 million years ago to the present has been recovered, preserved in limestone sediments and ancient caves, which testify to a formerly lush rainforest climate prevalent as Australia drifted north from Antarctica. It is unfortunate that most of Australia's present day, rather unique animals are in fact, just a remnant of what once was, when formerly higher rainfall spanned much of the continent. Many lineages and individual species, represented by the abundance recovered at Riversleigh, are now extinct and forgotten, except of course by a few enthusiastic palaeontologists, as described in this book. Readers will be surprised and delighted at the peculiar forms and fantastic colour illustrations and reconstructions presented in this book, and what things can be learnt of their extinction over time, as Australia drifted north.

Exquisitely illustrated, with on-site field notes and diagrams should keep the enthusiastic amateur fossil hunter entertained. An abundance of technical notes, photographs of real specimens and colour reconstructions, many of which uphold Australia's reputation for the unusual and/or the alternative, in terms of evolutionary development. Evolutionary experiments abound with examples which include 'thingadonta' (nobody really knows what it is), several species of marsupial lion, Tasmanian 'wolf' (thylacine) ancestors, flesh-eating kangaroos, several failed lines of kangaroos, several platypus ancestors, giant marsupials such as Diprotodon-the world's largest, a giant wombat, koala ancestors, numerous bats, possums, and creepy critters of all types, are presented. No primates unfortunately, and no bears or dogs, but it is interesting how some of these vacant evolutionary niches were filled by marsupial alternatives-especially in the case of the 'Tasmanian wolf', and the carnivorous marsupial 'lion'. And it is interesting to speculate what kind of alternative type of 'marsupial primate' may have (could still!) have arisen. An upright 'hominid'-like marsupial, wandering the Australian plains-who knows if Australian rainforests hadn't have all but disappeared.

The book puts the various animals and lineages into perspective, describing the changes of climate and habitat loss over the last 25 million years as Australia's climate became drier as the continent drifted north. Many lineages were/are in slow decline before the arrival of the aborigines and Europeans, as Australia's rainforests progressively shrank.

The colour illustrations and landscape reconstructions are a major feature, and they are outstanding. This book is highly recommended for the enthusiastic fossil hunter, or for those just curious in Australian animals and palaeontology in general.

The book is very useful. It shows you the beginning of all business subjects. It's a great fundamental business book