Generally an excellent book with many worked examples. Unfortunately there seem to be a few irritating errors. One error concerns section 13.3.1. The cost function in this example is set for a bandwidth of 1Hz. This is also indicated in Figure 13.70. However, the parameters a,b given in Figure 13.71 (and those found by the search algorithm) are correct for a bandwidth value of 10Hz. Incidentally, the third edition (student edition) of the book seems to be made of thinner paper than the second edition. I feel the book makes rather too much of quantisation effects and sample rate selection. It might be better to replace these chapters with a new chapter on model predictive control.

This book excellent for anyone interested in the Digital Control of Dynamic Systems. This book is Reccomended as a tool for Matlab implementation of control Systems. Very good book!

New Traditions In Terror is a new and ambitious horror fiction anthology. Why ambitious? Because the whole of the book is comprised of stories dealing with subject matter already much overdone: we're talking vampires, werewolves, vengeful spirits, ghouls, demons, and evil people here. A risky proposition indeed, as nowadays I dread reading vampire or werewolf stories for knowing that while the characters may change, the basic storyline is one that I've read hundreds of times before. That in itself would be acceptable, if not compounded by the fact that I usually also will have gotten absolutely nothing out of the story by its conclusion: no emotion, no involvement with any of the characters, not even the consolation of knowing that while nothing new may have been brought to the table, at least I'd had the pleasure of reading a gripping, page-turning story.

And so, New Traditions In Terror delivers sixteen stories and one poem, by authors the readers of Horror-Wood may not be familiar with. Seventeen fresh voices accepting the daunting challenge of writing tales containing characters that are increasingly looked down upon in the field as being passé.

For the most part, the authors vindicate themselves extremely well. While admittedly, few stories really do break any new ground (a story concerning a cyber werewolf is a notable exception), as a whole the stories are well-written, and do manage to sweep the reader up and carry them along for a short, but enjoyable ride. Many evoke a well-defined and appropriate atmosphere, almost tangible, as well as creating developed characters that I came to care about, hoping they would come to a good - or deceivingly bad - end. On at least one occasion I compared a story (favorably) to some classics I fondly remember from my decades of reading.

A few stories in this collection deserve mention. "Afraid Of The Water", by Robynn Clairday, does such a good job of evoking concrete images in her tale, that it brought back some very unpleasant memories of my own fear of water as a young child. "Monster", by Peter N. Dudar, is a great example of a tale that can build suspense and keep a reader on edge through merely hinting at the horror, rather than through any blatant or graphic depiction of it. A wonderful example of "less is more." The ending has a wonderful, Lovecraftian/Cthulhu feel to it. Lastly, there is "Kiowa Wells", by R. A. Cox. The highlight of the book, Cox's tale takes an old idea (vengeful Indian spirit), and weaves it into an enthralling classic. Heavily atmospheric, well-developed and written, perfect pacing, ever-increasing chills. I predict a deserved, enduring popularity for this one.

The only aspect of the book that I feel doesn't work is one story, only because it reads more like a "The Shadow"-type detective tale, with a monster casually thrown in at the end because one was needed, than as a horror story. It's a good tale, mind you, but definitely feels out of place with respect to the rest of the collection.

That said, New Traditions In Terror is a fine read, and a welcome addition to a horror fiction library. A collection of well-crafted and entertaining tales, from 17 talented writers from whom I hope we'll be fortunate enough to hear from again. It's encouraging to know that the future of horror fiction is in such capable hands.

Bill Purcell has collected many satisfying stories (about creatures thought to be passe or no longer frightening) in this book. Vampires, werewolves and ghosts are nothing new. But the stories in NTIT are not your granddad's WEIRD TALES stories. The authors of these stories get inside the monster and look out at the world. They do mre than go boo. Why do vampires drink blood? Would a werewolf even want to stop killing people?

Personal favorites: "Cargo" by Sean Logan, "Kiowa Wells" by R. A. Cox, "The Last Wolf" by Lester Thees and "Dogs" by Michael Beai.

If you are a fan of the old monsters, buy this book. If you are a fan of current horror, buy this book. If you are a fan of both, I envy you. (Oh, and buy this book.)

Usually when I pick up a themed anthology, I'm disappointed that all the stories seem the same. This book contains a good variety, loosly based around the theme of "traditional" monsters. The differant stories, and the unique writing styles, kept me entertained throughout the book. As I said above, some of the stories scared me, some just grossed me out, but all in all, I thought this was a great collection. My hat's off to the people who put this one together.

If hockey and baseball can have Total Hockey and Total Baseball what is up with basketball? Not a bad book by any means but needs a bit more punch to it. How about more insightful essays like those "Total" books go for?

The Official NBA Encyclopedia is the best book any hoops fan will ever read. Not only does it hold all the info for the current players, but it holds the complete history of basketball. The NBA, all its seasons, the Draft, International players, coaches, referees, expanding, photos, development, Hall of Fame, and tons of other great stuff are found as well as complete reviews of the ABA,NBL,and ABL. The NBA Seasons in Review is one of my favorite sections. The only negative thing about this book is that the seasons for the NBA are listed backwards. This encyclopedia has every stat for every player that ever played. I love reading this awesome history, and the Official NBA Encyclopedia is the perfect gift for any hoops fan. If I could, I'd give it more than 5 stars.

I know that what other reviews said is true : this book does not have EVERYTHING, but believe me, it's pretty close. More than 900 pages of basketball history is enough to know who made this game as great as it is today. You will learn about the players that lead the path to Kobe, Kevin Garnett and all of today stars, the great coaches, the commisioners, even the referees! You have all the stats for every player that played in the NBA, ABA and NBL. At least for me, that's enough to give it 5 stars.

I'm currently working through this book, and I am finding so many mistakes in this book, it's appalling. Spelling, punctutation, incorrect menus, incorrect directions. It's becoming quite frustrating. Sure, it's written in a conversational style, but that's quite annoying sometimes. The author spends more time trying to make smart remarks about the subjects than actually explaining them.

I bought this book several months ago, and I find it extremely informative and exciting. Iam a seasoned CorelDraw user, but this book taught me many new ideas and concepts to enhance my graphic design capabilities. The only draw back is that when I bought the book, a CD of exercises that are required through-out the book didn't come with the book I purchased.

Does any one out there know where I can purchase a CD with the exercises on it that's called out through-out the book ?

I am not an experienced user of CorelDraw 8, therefore I can appreciate the information found in this Official users guide. I find it to be very informative and simple to follow. It is obvious that the author is very knowlegeable with this program and he is extremely capable of explaining the many features of this remarkable program. I am having loads of fun learning this program and one of the main reasons is this book. So much to learn.....

Actually.....nil stars.

Only buy it if you are the sort of person who buys timeshare, the Eiffel Tower, etc...

For those who are unaware, the "MacCathy Mor" discussed in the book was really an imposter.

The reality of an indigenous Irish nobility is not much understood or accepted inside Ireland itself, much less in the rest of the world. As the victors write the history, too much Irish history has omitted any reference to the fact that Ireland had its own kings and nobles well before the Norman-English intruded on the scene. To this day the claims of persons such as the MacCarthy Mor to royal status are met with skepticism; relevant to this book, one individual expressed this skepticism so openly as to warrent a suit before the Italian courts. This lawsuit offered the MacCarthy Mor to present to a court of experts his credentials as Head of the Royal House of Munster, as Chief of his Name, and as rightful bearer of the coat of arms of the MacCarthy Mor. The Court carefully reviews and expounds on the evidence presented, and the ruling presents in detail the Court's rationale for fully supporting the MacCarthy Mor's claims. This book is a must read for any student of Irish history, modern aristocracy, chivalry, or heraldry. A word of warning, though: this is a legal document, and it reads like one -- don't expect light reading, but do expect to be educated!

If you thought that the Gaelic Nobility died out in 1601, or even 1691, this book is for you. This book documents the present situation of one of the Royal lines of Ireland. It documents the present views of two European powers towards the rights and prerogatives of the current representative of the Royal Eoghanacht Dynasty. This Royal line ruled over the southwest quarter of Ireland for more than a thousand years. The last regnant King was Donal IX, King of Desmond, who died in 1596.

Yet the dynasty, with it's rights and priveleges, survives! Contained in the book are the transcripts of two Italian Court rulings, a translation of a Certification from the Kingdom of Spain, and copies of various supporting documents that were made available for the Italian and Spanish authorities. This book will be of special interest to those who study the Gaelic history of Ireland, and those who claim descent from the MacCarthy family.

With a book of this nature, it's hard separating an evaluation of the book from an evaluation of the technology itself -- so I won't try too hard. Yes, the book showed certain evidence of haste in editing and proofing but the errors and weaknesses are not of the type to cause an early adopter to stumble. For instance, there is no index but chapters are distinct enough so that it is easy to find the broad categories.

I eagerly picked up this book after attending a very impressive demo of Curl's capacities. Only skimming the two chapters on Object Oriented Programming, I concentrated on the other chapters most relevant to GUI developers of Web-based applications.

Being an ardent practitioner of the W3C's Cascading Style Sheets technology, I was a bit disappointed in Curl's implementation of styles, which seems clumsy and very limited, even considering the differences in syntax. The authors were very knowledgeable on HTML and CSS issues -- which made their reliance on tables for layout a bit disturbing. Does this indicate that Curl lacks equivalents for CSS positioning and layout properties -- or merely that the authors did not happen to see this as important enough to include in examples?

I was dissatisfied with the paucity of examples and the fact that these examples were not of the type of depth to glue the various parts of Curl together. There were some good examples involving 2-D and 3-D graphics which showed the technology to advantage. However, if your primary interest is in form-based Web applications, the examples were sketchy.

The book really needs to have context. Criticism of Java, HTML, JavaScript, etc. is not enough.
The authors must speak more directly to the questions:
{}Does the Web world need another proprietary, Java-like browser plug-in?
{}Does the Curl organization have what it takes to go against Microsoft's .NET, which has a similar architecture and revenue model?

Answer these questions and you not only have a good book, but a real cool winning tool.

Curl is an important new client-side web language that permits you to create web applications that have the same rich interactive power of local applications (Word, Excel) while reducing the complexity that arises from using multiple existing web languages.

This is currently the BEST Curl book on the market. Ok, it's currently the ONLY Curl book on the market, which makes it Good News/Bad News.

Good News: This book does a great job of providing Curl information and "how to" examples in more depth than the Curl manuals. All the major topics are covered, which makes this a good overall reference book. The graphics architecture section is particularly helpful, where the authors describe the overall graphics framework of Curl. This info would save any new user time when learning Curl.

Bad News: by targeting the early adopter, the book is timely, but shows some warts. Some sections still show and describe the last beta version of Curl. The last beta was mostly similar to the current version of Curl, but the small differences are occasionally distracting. The book also has a number of typos and the class descriptions in one table were copied directly from the (free) Curl manual. As most of the authors are from Curl Corporation, this is not plagiarism, but it is not new information either.

Overall, this book serves its purpose by being the first overall book on Curl. The book itself is a great way to learn Curl in conjunction with the Curl manuals. Despite its warts, it is well worth owning.

[Bruce Mount worked as one of the Technical Reviewers for this book. No, he didn't review the section with typos. :-)]

If you have never been to curls website and looked at this new web technology, you do not know what you are missing. In some ways, you can think of Curl as Flash on steroids, although you can do much more than the eye candy Macromedia is known for.

They call this book an early adopter book, but, since I think Curl is most likely going to go the way of Microsoft Agent, it is more a Bleeding Edge book. Unlike Microsoft Agent, however, I do think this technology is very useful.

So, what is Curl? Curl is a new OO technology for web UI development. In many ways, it is what Java promised, with applets, in its early days. The main difference here is Curl is designed to create dynamic, awe inspiring presentations (ala Flash) without a lot of work (once you learn the language, that is).

The book deals with Curl primarily as a UI development language. Through the chapters you will learn to work with 2d and 3d environments, multimedia and even dynamic client interaction. As with all Wrox books, there are plenty of code examples (all downloadable from the Wrox site).

I really love this book, although I wonder if the technology will ever really take off (Curl engine download is huge if you have a dialup).

The problem with using advoates as authors is that you only get one side of the story. In the case of EMDR, for instance, there is research that says a) the eye movements are unnecessary and b) its effects do not last as long as Cognitive-Behavior Therapy based exposure procedures. This really undercuts the second part of the title of this book "for Long-Term Change". Stories and anecdotes are often entertaining but for true treatment help see a professional who reads the scientific research and is not a cheerleader for every fad that comes along.

I found this book to be a remarkable and consise description of a complicated topic. The authors summarized the state of the field of short term dynamic therapy. They held no information back and identified the areas of controversy, particularly conflicting opinions and data on the use of confrontation in the Davanloo approach versus the approach preferred by McCullough and Alpert. Furthermore, the inclusion of EMDR as a dynamic treatment was inovative and exciting. Neborsky and Solomon's chapter on "Changing the Love Imprint" explained how EMDR and the STDP's may have a common therapeutic action, which was helpful to me as was their integration of attachment theory. Finally, David Malan's chapter on the science of outcome evaluation and what we might learn from his career was an inspiration to read. I hope this group continues to write and create more material for clinicians like this!

The recent no-name reviewer from Atlanta who attacked Short-Term Therapy for Long-Term Change's lack of research must have bought some bootleg copy that omitted its hundreds of endnotes and citations. Its dozens of pages of transcribed therapy sessions will hardly be dismissed as "anecdotes" by any mindful reader. The book's six contributors are tops in their fields. Calling them "cheerleaders," as no-name does, is a whooper bordering on delusion. This book is the best available overview of the latest breakthroughs in short-term psychotherapy available.

I personally feel Benton's book leaves an abundant more it be answered. The book does have such good points like as to the photo's and diagrams presented in the text, but the book is written with a higher learning in mind that might leave the common reader wondering what they just read. I have read far better books than this one , and I recommend it only for students of paleology or seasoned veterans in the field.

I thought this book was one of the best Dinosuar books I have ever read.......this book had lots of really neat info about the different kinds of dinosuars and how to be a paleontologist in your own time. I give this excellent dino book four stars!!!!

Great, fantastic book for general knowlege of fossilation and geology back ground. highly reccomend

This book simplifies clinical neurology. I have read some books that are hard to understand. You will love neurology after reading this book.

This is a fine book for a clinician who is not at the entry level of competence. I recommend it for neurology interns and advanced medical students, mainly because there is not a better one in print. I think it lacks many therapeutic details, is too long for the student looking for a quick read power review, too limited for the advanced clinician.

Aminoff et al have produced a very readable introduction to Neurology. Most chapters are exceedingly well written, for the 'introductory' level. The only criticism that I would make is that therapeutic details are slightly thin...if these areas are muscled out it would be nice.

This book is directed to those who want to unburden and redefine their lives. Authors Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro encourage readers to re-evaluate their daily lives: relationships, work places, home, and purpose. They present their suggestions for the metaphorical "unpacking and repacking" of life's excess "baggage" in an easy-to-read, sensitive, and even humorous way. Suggestions and exercises encourage you to reexamine what is truly important. Though sometimes redundant, they provide encouraging, thought-provoking material. Reading this book may cause you to have a mid-life crisis "on purpose" and begin to live like Thoreau, "deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." We [...] recommend this book for those who want to simplify their lives and reassess their priorities.

This book is a pleasant, amusing, readable way of addressing the major issues that confront one at midlife: Am I living a life that accords with my values, ideals, and talents? If not, what specifically needs to be changed so I can achieve this? I found the "unpacking" metaphor especially appealing because (as an ardent traveler) I well know the real-life value of traveling light; it was rather astonishing to me to discover how much of a pack rat I've been in other aspects of my life! On the other hand, as a single person with many friends but no life partner (and no desire for one), I found that the authors' couple orientation rendered many of the exercises virtually useless for me. I agree that love is an important part of a full, satisfying life, but defining love as marriage, or the equivalent, seems ridiculously confining! Otherwise, the book is a pleasure to read, and most of the exercises gave me useful insights, so I recommend it with reservations.

This book is a must for every mid-lifer wondering where you've been and what direction you'd like to take for the second half of your life.