My manager asked me to explain Java and JavaBeans. This book did the trick. It's well laid-out, with lots of colour pictures, and deals with non-trivial issues in an understandable manner. It also comes with a Java tutorial, along with a try-and-(maybe)-buy version of a tool from Sun. I use this book a lot, along with "Borland's JBuilder: No Experience Required" by Zukowski, and "JBuilder Essentials" by Cary Jensen, et al. IMHO, if you're using JBuilder, you can buy these three books and pitch everything else.

I really enjoyed this book. I found the material clearly written and concise, the projects helpful, and was thankful for the beautifully illustrated examples and colorized source code.

Unfortunately, due to the absolute "newness" of the Beans technology and the awkward transition point we are all suffering through as we slowly migrate to version 1.1.x of Java from 1.0.x, there are inherent frustrations with regard to browser support (or lack, thereof) and, more importantly, many of the discussed products' near-but-not-quite-there support of JavaBeans. I think the book handles these issues rather well, though.

If you are seeking expert coverage into this new and amazing area of the Java Language I can't see a better place to start.

Once in a while, not very often, a book intended to give our young a whiff of world history turns out to be a bravura piece of mini-literature. This is the case with Chelsea House's "Syria," the latest of a series about the creation of the Modern Middle East.

In a lamentably brief space - 145 pages - it covers the Arab country's tortuous path from its subjugation by the Ottomon Empire at the dawn of the 16th century through its domination by the French in the modern era and on to its tenuous independence.

Steeped in Biblical lore, buffeted by the intractable winds of politics, religion and bloody military ventures, the nation of some nine million economically deprived people faces a precarious future as it stumbles into the 21st century. This might have been encapsulated in a dry and bewildering collection of dates and facts typical of many "primers." Here, oft-told tales and ghostly, half-forgotten faces spring to new life.

Historical background and evenhanded analysis alternate with bangup action.
The disastrous wars with Israel, the draconian rule of Hafez Assad, the riveting personalities of the great-hearted Saladin, the far-seeing King Feisal, yes, and the young Winston Churchill - it's all there, deftly integrated into the crazy-quilt of the Middle East.

The book is buttressed by a searching introduction by Islamic scholar Akbar
Ahmed and by a remarkably mesmeric gallery of photogaphs, some more than a century old.

But its main power rests in the narrative.
Author John Morrison, a noted Philadelphia journalist and poet, combines the terse, vivid style of a hugely gifted reporter with the dimension and color of a lyricist. Thus: "Just five feet, five-and-a-half inches tall, he was a little man. But he was as strong and tough as an Arabian saddle, and he had the endurance of a desert camel. In fact, it was said he could jump from a galloping camel while holding a heavy rifle, and hop back on again in midstride....He was....best known as Lawrence of Arabia."

You don't have to be a callow teen to savor this "Syria." -- Hans Knight

When it comes to holocaust histories, quantity seems to be the ideal and not quality. Like so many books about the holocaust, Ravensbruck just does not have the evidence to support the claims made by the author. In one section he talks about homicidal gas chambers and admits that there is not sufficient evidence to support that there even were any at Ravensbruck, yet he insist they "had" to be there. He even goes as far as adding a gas chamber in his drawing of the layout for the camp, placing the gas chamber when he does not even have proof that there were gas chambers there in the first place. Next, he manipulates workers for this gas chamber. Of course there is no evidence of workers either, so he says that most likely they would have been male prisoners from a near by men's camp. Of course, none have survived and lo and behold the author has an explanation for this too. They must have been killed. Of course any reasonable reader would realize that this is all speculation. Ravensbruck was in Germany and it has long been admitted, even by Elie Wiesel, that there were no homicidal gas chambers on German soil. I guess Mr. Morrison was just not privy to this public information and knowledge.

As for the women prisoners starving, the first half of the book shows pictures, drawn by a female inmate, and they all show sick, starving women. Towards the end of the book, however, the author shows real pictures and the women look healthy and well fed. Why do these photos give a completely different version from the drawings? Obviously, given the subjective nature of the drawings, it is easy to discern where the truth lies in this matter.

Ravensbruck was the only Nazi concentration camp that was built and operated exclusively for women prisoners. It was a labor camp located within Germany, not far from Berlin. Originally designed for indoctrination and industrial production (and mainly administered by the inmates), by war's end it had degenerated into just another overcrowded death camp with an agenda of mass extermination and the gas chamber (More than 140,000 Ravensbruck inmates did not survive the war). Jack Morrison's Ravensbruck: Everyday Life In A Women's Concentration Camp is an informative case study of how women of different nationalities and social backgrounds coped for years with a chronic lack of food and basic sanitation, illnesses, prejudices, and death. It was through asserting courage, love, and carving out their own cultural life under the harshest of conditions that the survivors overcame fear, hunger and hate. Ravensbruck is an impressive, much appreciated, highly recommended addition to Holocaust studies reading lists and library reference collections.

As a former student of Dr. Morrison's, I was especially happy to read about his top-notch research in a published format. Dr. Morrison informatively and lucidly illustrates the complex dynamic of women's history, Nazi Germany, and the horror of the Holocaust while at the same time bringing a human face to the tragedy which befell so many people from various backgrounds during the Second World War. I was lucky enough to hear Dr. Morrison speak about this engrossing topic on several occasions, but for those who have not, this book provides an excellent format for exploring Dr. Morrison's meticulous work. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in general history as well as the Holocaust. Bravo, Dr. Morrison!