This book contains a good discussion of nationality and its consequences for our daily lives. Miller discusses different philosophical positions on nationality, namely ethical universalism vs. ethical particularism and conservative nationalism vs. liberal nationalism. He believes that nationality can serve many constructive purposes, including keeping us together as an (imagined) community plus giving a basis for trust within a state. Miller recognizes the problems inherent in nationality - for instance the never-ending problems of supporting national self-determination as a doctrine - although he claims that nationality and nationalism are not equivalent. He argues that we should make nationality as non-ethnic as possible to include all members of the nation.

Miller does falter when it comes to the ethics of nationality in international relations, claiming that we should sponsor a 'friendly rivalry' between nations and help other nations help themselves without realizing how such a position can lead towards violating his belief in the inherent right for all nations to exist. At the end of the book he also supports the right of a state to offer protection to its national culture to prevent the McDonaldization of the world's cultures, something that can end up being quite illiberal in response to something many authors (like Anthony Smith) believe has been blown out of proportion. Nonetheless this book is quite generally quite convicing and is thus valuable reading for students of political theory and nationalism alike.

This book was created as a text book on Operating Systems, using OpenVMS as their example. It has a few, short, demonstration programs in 'C' (one for each of 10 chapters). It covers the theory and VMS implementation of many OS mechanisms, including Processes, Security, I/O, and VMS Disk useage. It has an excellent summary of the history of DEC operating systems.
It is an excellent tutorial for VMS theory and mechanics.
However, you should be aware that there are not enough coding examples for this to serve as a coding resource for VMS.

Instead of providing a dry recitation of rules and regs, this book takes an anecdotal approach to securities compliance rules. Its story-telling approach is useful in helping both securities producers and compliance professionals understand real world concerns.

Although not an in depth study of the securities industry, this book is highly recommended as a primer for compliance issues. It is also one of the easiest books on the topic to read. Overall, time well spent.

The New Illustrated Guide to weapons of the Elite Forces is packed with data about the weapons in service around the world. Good color illustrations and photographs.

David H. Miller's claim to have interviewed oodles of Indian survivors of the Custer fight is bogus. Most of the factual Indian material in the book is freely lifted from interviews recorded by other people such as Stanley Vestal. Even the Indian "portraits" which Miller supposedly did from life appear to have been done from photographs. It is significant that Miller waited until the last Indian survivor had died in 1955 before publishing. Like his spiritual descendent, Dee Brown, Miller writes nonsense while leaning on the works of more reputable authors...

His "original" material is sheer nonsense, like his contention that Custer committed suicide and that the powder burns were somehow "wiped away" by cover-up officers -- and that Custer's body was taken away on the Far West rather than buried on the field. (Oddly enough, he also claims that Custer got shot crossing the river...)

I have not yet read the book but am now ordering it. I noticed that a couple of the reviews from readers questioned the validity of the book. It is absolutely authenic. I was the Millers banker in 1981 when they lived in Rancho Santa Fe, Ca. and I visited their home on 2 occasins. Mr. Miller has a fascinating background which does include living with the indians and seeking out those who had fought Custer approximately 50 years prior to his painting their busts.His home was full of Indian artifacts which he refused to sell because they had been given to him and had special meaning. Mr. Miller was also employed on the sets of several cowboy movies as an Indian expert. He was about 75 years old in 1981 and I have lost total contact with him. I just want readers of this book to know that it is the real thing.

Having read several differing accounts of the battle at Little Big Horn, I find that no one, not even the Indians know what happened that day. Mr. Miller has done his best to present the views of the Indians who fought at the battle as factually as possible. I have not read a recent printing, (my book was printed in 1965, 208 pages counting lists of Indians interviewed or mentioned and the Officers of the 7th Cavalry). I have not been able to find anything in this book, or in any other books to make me believe that Mr. Miller has done anything other than present the facts as best as he could, and I highly recomend this book for anyone interested in the truth about what happened June 25, 1876.

Many wrox books are great, but this one was a disappointment. As an "classic ASP" developer I found the examples unhelpful and impractical, the information spread out, the request and response object - used constantly in classic ASP - were so poorly explained I still have no idea how they function in ASP.net. I am sure that ASP.NET has many important benefits that make it superior to Classic ASP, but after reading almost 600 pages (!) I feel I do not understand how to achieve the same result I can easily get in Classic ASP. Not recommended.

I wanted to create a simple web application with this book that would allow for authenticated users to add content and allow non-authenticated users to simply view content. The book was perfect for setting up the the database connections, and web forms. The book fell on its face with security. The concepts were included and some examples were included, but there was no information about user roles when using forms based authentication. One feature I think most ASP.Net applications are going to have is authentication so I found it distressing that it was given such incomplete coverage. To get more information you need to look at one of two other Wrox books - Beginning Web Programming with Visual Basic.Net and Visual Studio.Net, or ASP.Net Security. The first book covers mostly the same information as this book, but goes into more detail on security. It too though is not complete. With the inclusion of about five more pages in this book it would have been complete from my viewpoint.

First of all, a good number of my undergraduates like this book as it introduces the bare bones required to get something up and running quite quickly. The downside of the book, from my persusal of it, is that it is less even than it could be, or perhaps should be. In many chapters (especially the crucial early ones) examples are often introduced and developed before their key constructs are properly explained. This is simply confusing to naive readers and highly irritating. For instance, the earliest ASP.net script uses "asp:label" without explaining the syntax or semantics for a another few dozen pages.

Unfortunately this is a bit of trend throughout the book and at the very least makes it frustrating. However, once you allow for this, (and it's a big allowance to make) the book is very handy.

It has bundles of scripts that anyone involved in web work will find interesting and useful. You can quibble with some of these (the login scripting for example) contra other books such as Professional ASP.NET, but I suspect this is a byproduct of committee authorship.

The book is clearly aimed at the learner so don't expect Enterprise quality insights into server management. Given the huge range of architectures and technologies available to the developer, producing any 'true' learner book is a considerable challenge. If you need a book for coursework alone, then this will probably meet most of your needs. If you earn your living with the .NET and its companions, then you need some supplementary texts.

This book has lots of pictures. Unfortunately, the information and specifications is spotty at best. One entry proclaimed the muzzle velocity for a 9mm pistol at 295 feet per second (Hint, paintball or BB guns maybe, real guns, no). In addition to factual errors, there are a string of typos.

A lot of the pictures are of seriously abused guns, with some junk ones thrown in...

Well I'm pretty neutral on this book. It features many good pictures of good guns, inlcluding some that I've never seen (the Terry Pattern Carbine, Kuntz Air Rifle, and Whitney-Burgess Carbine stick out). However, it has more typos and misplaced photos than you can imagine! Two examples are the editor not knowing how to spell the "Keene" part of the Remington-Keene Rifle and placing the bizarre-looking Webley-Fosbery Semiautomatic Revolver's photo on the description of the conventional Webley & Scott Mark V's description (the weapon is clearly stamped "Webley-Fosbery", too). There are also errors in the statistics of the weapons, but these are probably due to typos more than factual mistakes. The descritions, in some cases, are also too scant (the aforementioned Kuntz Air Rifle needs a little more and the book fails to mention the famous Ferguson Rifle, though many of the photos appear to be taken at the West Point Museum, which has a Ferguson Rifle on display). In summary, if you like over 1,000 gun photos, then get this book. If you don't like over 1,000 typos, then don't get this book.

Great illustrated text of the history and details of famous firearms. Although this is not an all inclusive list of firearms it has all of the historical as well as technical innovative firearms of the world, my only complaint is its grouping of firearms by country. This is now one of my favorite books to add to my more technical books on firearms.

I took the exam 70-029 today. It is the toughtest Microsoft exam I have ever taken. (I have passed three MCP exams). This book-in fact- no book covers the depth of knowledge required to pass the exam. This book touches the subjects briefly only, a very shallow coverage. To pass the exam, you need to buy 'Inside Sql Server 7.0', 'Handbook of Relational Database Design by Candance Fleming & Barbara von Halle,' and this book or Microsoft Training guide.Don't just skim through the pages, have a thorough understanding of the concepts.

I definitely agree with the previous reviewer on at least two counts -- #70-029 is possibly the hardest MS exam yet AND this book - and probably any single other book - will not totally prepare you to pass the exam. I passed using this book, the MS training kit, a fair amount of studying (hands on with the product + books online) and only a few months of SQL Server 6.5/7 experience.

However, this book does do a very good job of covering the topics from the MS exam prep guideline in as much detail as can be expected in a test prep book. The book also then cites other resources such as Books Online where additional information may be found. Don't take that advice lightly - you will need additional information on all subjects.

Like studying for most exams, it is best to use this book in combination with at least one more. This one was the first exam 70-029 prep guide out, but I dare say that there may not be a better one even when they are all out. The sample exams and other study aids are good at helping you learn the concepts, even if they are far more simple than the actual exam questions. The book/CD definitely is worth the $.

I have 5 yrs experience in building database applications with non-SQL Server databases. This book was all I used for about 4 weeks of 'spare time' studying. I thought the author covered the objectives effectively (light on the maintain db section), although there were some inaccuracies that I wish they would post corrections for on their website. Didn't anybody take the beta 70-100? That was a hard exam!

I purchased this book because I was looking for a leg up with creating data driven web pages with C#. (I found the C# books light on the ASP side.)

This book clearly has some value about ASP.Net using C#, but it should really have been titled Introduction to programming using ASP.Net and C#.

The author spends way too much time educating the reader about topics like how to declare a variable and that SQL means structured query language, and to retrieve data you use the SELECT command. There is actually a whole chapter on what a variable is, and how you declare them. (boring). The first 4 chapters are pretty much useless to anyone but a person learning how to program for the first time.

(note: too many Access database examples..)

That said, there are some valuable topics, and I did get something from the book. There is a pretty good review of Static Class Members and Class relationships. (for those of you moving to Object Oriented programming). Chapters 12 - 17 are really the meat of this book. Covering Database Driven web sites, Server Controls (very valuable), Component building and Debugging/Error Handling.

Bill

The books content on ASP.Net is excellent and provides the reader with a good foundation to start developing on the .Net platform. The range and depth are good for the beginning series that Wrox(The Red Book) puts out. The book progresses so that even a novice web programmer can learn the fundamentals of ASP.NET. However, I was unable to give the book 5 stars due to some lack in details in typos. Even with a few mistakes, (authors are human), the content of the examples is excellent. If you have any problems with an example it's always good to check or post new entries to the book errata section on Wrox's own site. Also, if you are trying to learn all about C# you would be better off purchasing a book that deals only with C#. This book's title gives you exactly what it says and then some.

The best book currently out on the subject as of July, 2002.
has good database access examples.
is generaly very good.