People of all ages will enjoy leafing through the pages of this facinating photo book on 20 Century, cutting-edge, dream inspired, automobile design. This book provides the reader with a look at "futuristic" car designs from the early 1900's to 1980. Along with excellent photographs, each design is described in brief telling such information as, projected price, speed, and special features. Some of these early designs would still be notable today. If you are a product designer or interested in design, you will appreciate the subtler details of these designs. You may even find yourself getting design ideas for your projects as you look at some of the solutions your predecessors have tried. Because this book is impossible to find in local bookstores, I have had people offer me cash for my copy. "No way!" I say.

I have found this book to be an excellent reference. The coverage of the install process is especially useful - it is clearer than the installation manual! I also like the chapter on high availability, which has a good explanation of Sun Cluster technology and how the DB2 HA agent works. The book has step-by-step instructions for most basic DBA functions, and has never been far from my hand since I found it.

This is an excellent textbook to accompany a course on the geography of Southeast Asia. I have used it for several years with just such a course (given in French at the Universite de Montreal). The book is well structured, with a first major part devoted to thematic topics such as the physical geography, the history, and so on, of Southeast Asia. Two-thirds of the book are devoted to an in-depth treatment of each of the ten political units of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc.). The author has a vast experience in the geographic research of this region, and this becomes evident through the reading of this timely book. Two drawbacks: 1)the book was published in 1994, so the data are somewhat out of date; 2) published by Editions Masson, the book seems to be now out of print. So if you find a used copy, get it while you can. [...]

An exquisite book which binds architecture and literature to create a seductive affair.

I have the first book Rodolphe L. Desdunes wrote
and I enjoyed it. Also I am doing research on my ancestry
so the book came out just in time.H e is my father's GGG
uncle.

PS:once again I have really enjoyed both of his books.

Thank You

I used this book while visiting Venezuela, and I was able to identify quite a few birds. However, I found that some of the color plates are inaccurate, which made identification rather difficult at times. Several species (such as the Green Jay, some tanagers) are depicted with improper coloration- some were too pale, some too brightly colored and/or with incorrect markings. The book was very useful and I'm glad I bought it, but be aware that the bird you see may look significantly different in the book.

There are a couple of risks of misunderstanding with regard to this book that must be made clear here. Firstly it is in no way a second edition. The only things in common with the first guide to the birds of Venezuela, by Meyer de Schauensee and Phelps Jr are the familiar old plates by Guy Tudor, the title, and the publisher. In all other respects it is completely new. Secondly, the "Grand-daddy" review here, clearly refers to the original book and not this one.

Having said that, there is little one can add to Chris Sharpe's comprehensive review except to say that I have already used Hilty's book extensively for research this year, along with the other current guides for other countries, and have found it to be the best. In my opinion it sets a new standard. The only small weakness worth noting here is the plates, but has there been a guide that is perfect in this respect?

For anybody birding in Venezuela, the book is an essential item to have along.

I believe the earlier reviewers are mistakenly referring to the 1978 First Edition of this field guide (Meyer de Schauensee and Phelps 1978). As the first modern field guide to a South American avifauna, the original Birds of Venezuela is certainly now showing its age though it is still a remarkably useful field aid to the world's sixth largest national avifauna. The new edition - practically an entirely new field guide - is a very different kettle of fish. What makes this new edition different?

First of all, the new guide is twice as thick and the text is much more closely packed. The book now weighs in at over 1.8 kg (4 lbs) and is more along the lines of the field guide volume of the Birds of Ecuador (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001). Nearly a hundred new species are treated, taking the country total to 1381. Far more species are illustrated and more colour plates have been used, though eight black and white plates have been retained to depict flying raptors and swifts. We now have 67 plates compared with the previous 53 - a 25% increase. Twenty-five of the plates are entirely new with beautiful artwork primarily by John Gwynne. The new plates cover a range of taxa, with Cracids, owls, nightjars, toucans, tanagers, Fringillids, Emberizids and Icterids particularly well covered. A further four have been adapted from Birds of Panamá (Ridgely and Gwynne 1989) and one from Birds of Colombia (Hilty and Brown 1986). The remaining 37 are basically the same Guy Tudor plates (and one by John Gwynne) from the old edition with some modifications.

To my mind, though, it is the text which has really benefited from this new edition - so much so that this should really be thought of as an entirely new field guide. The format follows and improves on the standard set by Birds of Mexico (Howell and Webb 1995) and Birds of Ecuador. The type-setting and text layout have allowed far more text to be included than, say, Birds of Ecuador and Hilty has also been precise and economical with his words. This comes as no surprise to those familiar with Hilty's earlier Birds of Colombia.

The text is far more oriented towards identification than in the old edition - the main requisite for a field guide. The first section contains information specifically on identification and this is followed by a section on similar species, where further comparative text is merited. The voice section is new and seems to be very well compiled with - to my taste - excellent transliterations of songs and calls. Much natural history information and further aids to identification are included under a paragraph on behaviour. A detailed appraisal of status and habitat preference is included before the final discussion of range. The text retains the custom established by the earlier edition of separating range information by subspecies, a feature which is particularly welcome in these times of ever changing taxonomy. Range maps are another new feature and they make use of points corresponding to specimen and sight records as well as the customary shading to indicate overall range. In short, they are similar in format to those provided in Birds of Ecuador.

Finally there is a good selection of references at the end of the book and some very nice colour habitat photographs at the beginning. A well annotated locality map of the country is also provided together with colour relief and vegetation maps.

Any drawbacks? With a work of this magnitude there are bound to be some errors and omissions and I quickly found a number of minor inaccuracies too petty to mention here. Perhaps the guide could have a benefited a wee bit more from external review of status and range of some species - there are gaps in the known range of a number of species. Many will also carp about the dimensions and weight of this new guide, though this is an inevitable product of the diversity of the avifauna in question and nothing that cannot be remedied with a pair of scissors and a certain degree of irreverence.

In resumé, an essential buy for all who are interested in Neotropical ornithology and truly great value for money too. I can't wait to get the book out into the field!

While most monographs are unfortunately stuffed with photos of built work, Office dA has very little built work, this one is is pleasantly filled with many sketches and working drawings. There are two completed projects (as seen in Architecture) and many uncompleted projects. I heard Nader Tehrani speak at the Wexner Center and unfortunately the book cannot begin to describe the thoughtful manner of their designs. Otherwise, it is an excellent book that shows the process of their design. For a monograph this is an excellent book.

I've never understood architecture monographs that rely almost solely on text and photos. Design is about drawing, and without sketches, details, section and plans, the resulting building exists in a vacuum. For that reason, I really enjoyed this book. The use of working drawings gives you an understanding of the thought and technique that results in some very creative and beautiful designs. The photographs (and there are quite a few of them) do a great job of bringing out the subtle details of Office dA's work. Granted, it's not all architecture (there are furniture and sculpture pieces) and not much of it is built (8 out of 11 projects are in model form), but it's engaging and inspiring nonetheless. It was also nice (and, as a student, instructive) to see scale models of such a high quality, instead of the usual computer-generated renderings. It's a great book for anyone interested in current design, and a must-have for architecture students.

The authors of the 8 chapters in this book provide an excellent overview of wavelets, wavelet transforms, and their applications in chemical engineering. The first two chapters deal with wavelets, wavelet transforms, and an easy-to-read tutorial on computing wavelet transforms and constructing wavelets. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss applications in trend analysis and feature extraction. The authors of Chapter 4 present applications of wavelets to the field of process and sensor data fingerprinting. Chapter 5 describes how wavelets can be used along with neural networks to extract information from process data via induction. Chapter 6 presents a wavelet domain formulation and solution of model predictive control. Chapter 7 addresses numerical solution of differential equations, solutions for which exhibit abrupt changes, using orthogonal and semi-orthogonal wavelets. Several numerical examples are given. The last chapters discusses implentation of two-dimensional wavelet packet transform and its application to analyze two-dimensional turbulent flow fields. The book is valuable as a reference source and should prove useful to introduce researchers to the exciting facets of wavelets.

Good heavens! What an awful title for a book. Hearing it for the first time, I dropped my monacle. Hearing the title for the second time made me do it again. I really should stop being so horrified.

Interesting, thought-provoking, sometimes even funny, but in the end, you're better off buying Kevin Kim's "Scary Spasms in Hairy Chasms," which deals with the subject more humorously and less (ahem) maturely.

Once I got past the unusual odor upon opening this book I couldn't put it down. The kind of book you want to put into the lavoratory for your guests to read when using the facilities The preforated tear out pages remind the old timers what Montgomery Ward and Sears catalogs were once used for.