We have been signing with my 11 1/2 mos old for several months. Although I've read some ASL books, many of the signs are too difficult for an infant to use. I did get a couple of new ideas from this book - but I would have liked a few more everyday words. I do like the fact that it's a board book - so it's difficult to damage. I am also a pediatrician and I really think it benefits a child to learn signs as a way of expression before speech is developed.

Curt's tales of ranching and working the oil fields of New Mexico and West Texas are both warm and entertaining. He reminds us of what life is like and what it was at a time when things were much simpler. I heartily recommend reading this book. It will do you heart some good!

I read this book in the early 80's. As I was reading it, the book would change my moods. It was like a bit of science fiction, where I had stepped inside the book and was a character at the parties the protagonist goes too.

I recommend the book

Curt Smith replicates the format of his earlier "The Storytellers," this time turning the "mikes" over to football rather than baseball announcers. Personally, I liked the earlier collection better, perhaps because I prefer the diamond to the gridiron. And Smith's own passages, in the announcer profiles and chapter introductions, once again show a lot of duplication from his earlier books like the aforementioned "Storytellers" and "Voices Of The Game." Nonetheless, there's no shortage of great anecdotes here and this book should be more than welcome for fans of football or broadcasting.

The author shows that how we view man determines how we act, treat others, conduct business, create art, and interpret the world around us. If we understand that man has been created in God's image, then we will have a different way of interpreting the world and events. This book provides a unique way to help enlarge one's world view.

My own reading over the years has convinced me that the likelihood of Shakespeare's being a Catholic is greater than the one he was not. Though there's no real 'smoking gun', as it were, so much circumstantial evidence exists which taken together would certainly convince most evidence gatherers: and Carol Curt Enos' book does the great job of gathering much of that evidence together to build up a very good case(incidentally, she's not a Catholic herself). Taken together with such books as Ian Wilson's Shakespeare the Evidence, Honigmann's Shakespeare The Lost Years, and Father Peter Millward's books on the subject, this book adds very much to or understanding of the religious background of the English language's greatest writer.

I own a Suzuki GS450TXZ, and bought this manual as a supplement to the Clymer manual I've had for years. The first thing I noticed was that the photography and diagrams were excellent. Very close, clear and detailed pictures of the parts being worked on. I also found the text to be consise and straightforward.

If there is anything lacking in the book, it was that the bulk of it only refers to the 250 and 400 models. All information about the 450 was put into the last couple of chapters. One was expected to flip between the instructions for disassembly in the front of the book, then flip back to find the proper calibration numbers in the back.

In the end, though, I find the book worth having.

I don't think there's a better golf writer, or for that matter sports writer, in today's book world than Mr. Sampson. He can turn a phrase as well as John Updike, and he's the kind of writer who could write about paint drying and make it fascinating. His profiles of the men involved in making the Masters what it is today--weirdo Cliff Roberts, tragic golf great Bobby Jones, and even Dwight Eisenhower--are great. There's a good balance of behind-the-scenes power broking and great golf throughout the years. But what makes this book even better, what raises it to a higher level, is its examination of the relationship of the town of Augusta to the elitist Augusta National Club. It's fascinating to read about what the townspeople think of the club, and how some of them--like singer James Brown, and boxer Beau Jack--have interacted and been affected by the racist Club. There's a tremendous amount of texture in Sampson's descriptions, enough to justify the comparisons to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Sampson also, by the way, wrote another classic golf book entitled The Eternal Summer: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Hogan in 1960, Golf's Golden Year. It's out of print but one of the most enjoyable golf books I've ever read.

Someone should also reprint Sampson's insightful book on pro basketball, Full Court Pressure (a lousy title for the best book on the NBA since The Breaks of the Game). It came and went a few years ago and deserves to be more widely read.

Author Curt Sampson captures the birth and life of one of the most famous sporting events in the world, The Masters golf tournament. Played annually in Augusta, Georgia, this prestigious golf tournament has become the new face of golf. Mr. Sampson shows us how this once unknown place, turned into a sanctuary for some of the greatest golfers of all time. He gets deep into how it was started by a group of New York business men, only 68 years after the Civil War. He shows us how although, one of the most famed golf course in the world has always been dampered by the reputation for being a racist society. He explains how that when Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997, Augusta and the Masters had come full swing from what it once was. This book goes well into detail about things the common person would have never known or been able to find out. Although, occasionally drags on about the birth of this event. this book has solid content and gives information that you would have never known otherwise. I recommend this book to any golf enthusist.

If Sampson's probe is anywhere near the truth, it surely smudges the high place we give to Augusta and The Masters.

Certainly, it still revolves around Jones, and it always has. The legend of this amateur and supposed gentleman is tarnished by his association with Roberts and his seizure of power and control of what has become golfing legend.

Without the champion's name and backing and tournament, The Masters and Augusta would be just another club and tour stop. But from the outset it was Bobby who kept it together. Then the illness and pulling away, and the inroads of Cliff and the rest is history, here well documented by one of the great golf writers. Sampson again weaves his literary magic with different piercing vignettes of the personalities and events which have led to Augusta lore and legend.

Story upon story from various facets permeate this fluid read--from club caddie to townfolk to neglected member and player -- one is given much to contemplate.

The tales are superb, sampling but a few: the caddie deliberately overclubbing Robert's opponent on a Par 3 course contest; Dave Marr's respone to Arnie that even his divot cleared Rae's Creek on 15; the asst. pro's wife being offered big money for the rope marker that only quandred off souvenir sales.

Augusta appears to be the premier "ole boys" club. If you want scoop about it's past and insights possibly into its present, this read will begin that path.

This books is satisfactory..The first 10 chapters are good, the Schema Chapter 11 forgot how to tell the XML document which Schema do you want to use (This is a confusing figure it out chapter). The XML Databases chapter is poor, only showing examples with SQL Server (What about standard SQL databases, not the MS one).

The book is almost 900 pages but only 500 are material, the final 400 are case studies and appendixes.

However this is not a bad book, but is not the best way to start learning XML.

XML is not the replacement of HTML. If you want to write XML to convert it to HTML with XSL then you will take twice the time to create them, not an intelligent move. The true power comes when you want to interchage data between applications, not only web (you can use it with desktop applications with C++, Delphi, Java, VB, ASP or any other programming way) or to talk with a web server sending an XML request and receiving an XML response that you can parse with DOM or SAX.

Recommended but you will need other books to go on.

(This is a review of the 1st edition of this book.) My title to this review may be contradictory, but what I mean is, this is a good book for someone with absolutely no background in XML, as long as that person has some technical background in a related field, like HTML, Javascript, Java, etc. If this is the first book or experience you've had with any web-related technology, then you'll be hard-pressed to keep up.

Hunter does a good job explaining each item and I really like the way he branches into many related technologies, instead of just plain XML. Those related technologies include XSLT and XPath, DOM, SAX, DTDs and schemas. Some of these things, such as schemas and DTDs are essential for learning XML, so I'm glad they are covered.

At the beginning of the book, I thought that Hunter was another Microsoft lemming, just following the Microsoft trends and technologies. But it soon became apparent that he uses MS products where they make sense, but is quick to point out their drawbacks. It irks me to no end how the entire world chooses an internationally-accepted standard, then MS decides to come up with their own. Hunter does a good job of pointing that out.

One complaint is that this book doesn't do much in helping the Macintosh user that's starting into the XML field. That may have been remedied in the 2nd edition, and to be fair, there weren't a lot of tools available for the Mac user when this was written. I did find some Mac tools and found it humorous how the Windows, Java and Unix tools require extensive use of the command line, altering class paths, etc, while the Mac version was "drag the file onto the icon" to accomplish the exact same thing. But that's how the Mac world works.

I've seen 4 or 5 XML books and own two including this one. The other one I have is XML: A Primer 2nd Ed by Simon St. Laurent...I've seen other books as thick as or thicker than 'Beginning XML' and from a quick glance, I've found to contain little more than fluff.

'Beginning XML' does a good job of covering all the important topics related to XML like Namespaces, DTDs, Schemas, XPath, DOM, SAX, XSLT, CSS etc... much so that the title is not really accurate in this sense. The other introductory XML books out there do not even touch on these topics to any practical degree.

I would also not recommend a Microsoft Press XML book as, typical with anything from Microsoft, I suspect it will teach you XML in a style that forces you to be dependent on Microsoft tools. However, as MS is one of the most important purveyors of quality XML tools it would also be a mistake to ignore their offerings. 'Beginning XML' does a very good job of acquainting you with both the MS tools as well as some of the more important third party ones.

The author's style is very friendly and easy to read and succeeds in making very complex and often boring topics like XSLT almost tolerable and sometimes even entertaining. Even more importantly, he touches on all the important issues in depth so that after finishing this book you can consider yourself at least an intermediate level expert in the myriad XML-related technologies out there.

The only reason I'm not giving five stars is because there just might be something better out there. But then, I wouldn't hang around waiting for one, 'coz Beginning XML, unlike the other books out there, is going to educate you on the topic in a sufficiently comprehensive and useful way. XML and its related technologies is a huge and difficult field, and any book that looks like it makes for light reading will, in my opinion, fail to teach the subject properly.

This book is very weak on electrical information. It has only partial wiring diagrams and really only covers the most basic of problems. Guess I should have listen to the reviewer that gave the book to his kids...

If you are ready to work on your own vehicle, then buy Haynes manuals. Haynes gets specific about how to remove, repair, and repalce with helpful hints and steps. CAUTION: repairing your own vehicle requires some basic knowlege of how your car works. However, common sence can go a long way. This book will not inform a 6th grader how to fix engine problems. This book covers in depth each engine size from 4 cyl to 6 cyl, all different engine sizes from those years. It also states a disclaimer that it does not cover specialty equipment such as All Wheel Drive.

Haynes manuals are far superior to anything else on the market for all around basic do-it-youself information. They are not perfect. Information on the majority of systems is more than adequate for basic home repairs, but while basic wiring diagrams are included, they do lack detail in the area of electronics. In contrast, Chilton manuals often include no chassis electrical or electronic information whatsoever and factory service manuals are very, very dry and can be hard for non-pro's to read.

It should be said, however, that these books are not for the neophyte car owner who has never done any repair work before. If you're an absolute beginner, buy the book AND find someone with good skills to shepherd you until you get the basics. This will save a lot of heartache in the long run.