Well, the O'Hara revival attempted a couple years ago failed utterly. His books are still largely out of print. He's an okay writer, with the occasional gem. Some of those gems are in this book.

The Instrument is primarily focused on the character of Robert Yancey (Yank) Lucas, a playwright who has just written his first play. He manages to get Broadway to put on his play and in addition, his play catches the attention of Zena Gollum, Broadway's leading actress.

Lucas and Zena have a torrid love affair, despite Zena being married. However, even this is not able to make him happy as Lucas struggles to be himself as his play becomes a huge success. Eventually the media and fanfare surrounding him begin to encroach on his freedom. He escapes it all by leaving in the middle of the night and driving to a remote village in Vermont. There he meets up with a variety of women, whom he beds while writing his next play.

I am not sure what to make of this book. It was an interesting character study as well as the workings of Broadway and show business. However, Lucas wasn't a very redeeming character and seemed to take his bedroom antics with a touch of "easy come, easy go." The writing and story was interesting but, my complaint was that I was a little baffled as to the purpose of the story and what O'Hara was trying to communicate.

This book is interesting only as an historical curiosity. This is John O'Hara's last novel, which was incomplete at his death. In fact, he'd hardly started it. What he did write is, frankly, garbage. This was intended as a sequel to "The Ewings"- a disastrous, plotless, pointless novel that O'Hara had published the year before. Inspired by the TV version of Galsworthy's "Forsythe Saga," O'Hara envisioned a series of novels discribing an American family over the years, however, his powers were no longer up to the task.

This edition is a facsimile of his manuscript. It's printed on yellow paper, and is typed by O'Hara himself, with hand-written corrections throughout. This is a tremendous treat for any reader of this underappreciated American author, as the reader gets some sense of how the great man worked. If only an edition like this were available for one of O'Hara's great books. Five stars for the edition, 1 for the text.

It was very hard to find one thing good about this book and the only thing good about this book is that it is a Dummies book. I have bought Dummies books in the past and have found them to be very helpful, but not this time! If I could have given this book a lower review than 1, I would have given it. I have spent many frustrated hours trying to figure out the code, that does not work. Every chapter is like an uphill battle, trying to get the code to work. Didn't anyone test the code before the book was published?

The authors take a lot of things for granted. They assume that you know a lot of C++, for instance, and expect you to be experienced at this and be able to do many of the examples from the book, and automatically know what to do. They also skip over important details and I almost feel like I have to read the Authors mind to figure out what they are up to. There are so many holes left in each explanation. I have never seen so many holes and empty spaces left in a book! The authors fail to take you step by step. This book is not for beginners and is more for people who have Corba experience. Why do they call it a dummies book?

I was having so much trouble that I thought that I would E-mail the author. The dummies books, that I have, give you the authors E-mail in case you have problems. Unlike other Dummies books the Authors had left their E-mail address out so that the reader could not contact them, I wonder why? I have contacted the publishers and they sent me John's discussion group which, needless to say, did not work! I got some kind of error message and could not leave a message for him. The allocated time registration to use Orbix is too short to finish the book and I have to continually renew it. Which is a real nuisance.

One good way to get turned off Corba in a hurry is attempting to read this book. Another good thing, I just remembered about the book is the cartoons. Dummies cartoons are always funny and they urged me to keep trying to figure out this book. At least I could get a laugh in between the times when I was thoroughly frustrated with this book.

If I could return this book, I would.

I wrote a review for this book about one month ago and I still do not see it here. I wonder if it is a waste of time to write a review? I would like an explanation as to why my review was not put in with the rest. I took a great deal of time and thought to create that review. I also followed your guidelines, what is up?

Thank You Rob Fisher Programmer/Analyst

I bought this book thinking that it would be a good place to learn CORBA. While I picked some things up because I didn't know anything at all, when I did learn the correct way of implementing CORBA, I realized how this book over-complicated many things. The biggest problem is the proscribed method of compiling the projects using Visual C++. Sheesh. It is a lot simpler that the process they use. The actual IDL examples are OK, but overall, there a better books out there that can be had.