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Book reviews for "Owendoff,_Robert_Scott" sorted by average review score:

After the Alamo
Published in Paperback by Republic of Texas Pr (1999)
Authors: Bob Scott and Robert Scott
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Texas history revisited
When a history book starts off with a couple of glaring flaws, you have to work at it to regain your enthusiasm. Comanches, not Cherokees, were the scourge of the Texas frontier. They were so bad, they even ran the Apaches to far west Texas. Then, Anahuac is not on Copano Bay, it's over a hundred miles east on the east side of Galveston Bay.

The basic premise of this book is that "real Texans" were not at the Alamo or Goliad. That the real Texans had gone home to get the fields ready for planting after Gen Cos surrendered San Antonio in December, 1835. That it was the "johnny-come-latelys" with no stake in Texas, who continued the revolt against Mexico. One hispanic historian made the comment, "The only real Texans at the Alamo were the eleven Tejanos."

More "in depth" histories have shown that there were revolts in several Mexican states against Gen. Santa Anna. Tejanos and Texians both had grievances against the central government for many years. So, while the "johnny-come-latelys" fought at the Alamo and Goliad, "real Texans", both brown and white, were willing to take up arms against a dictator. The tragedy is that the newcomers discriminated against the Tejanos once the war was won. Midwesterners, who came to Texas after 1900, would repeat this discrimination.

Well-documented take on the hows & whys of the TX Revolution
Scott did substantial research in preparation of his work. He tries to look into the minds of the key players of the revolution without taking liberties. The book focuses on the arguable deficiencies of 'general' Fannin that led to the massacre at Fort Defiance, along with the sometimes misunderstood actions of Sam Houston.

Many of the accounts of the Revolution are conflicting, especially regarding the intentions of Houston and Fannin, and I did get the impression that Scott had already picked his favorites when he began writing. Having said that, he presented both sides of the conflicting accounts and the reasons he gave more weight to the accounts he trusts.

Although already an avid Texan, I am chomping at the bit to read more about the events before, during, and after the revolution after reading AFTER THE ALAMO. If you think you know what happened in the 1830's, but are relying on what you learned in school (assuming you took Texas History) you really need to read this book to find out who the real heroes were.

Very readable, very entertaining, and very enlightening.

EXCELLENT STUDY OF SELDOM DISCUSSED HISTORY
Many other works have gone into great detail about the major events of the Texas revolution: the Alamo, The Runaway Scrape and San Jacinto. Mr. Scott has taken a great step forward and covered in deep and fascinating detail the 'other' stories of the war, usually mentioned only in passing: Refugio, San Patricio, and the most tragic figure in the saga, Colonel Fannin. I have many other works about this period in my library, and I must say this is certainly one of my favorites. Definitely a must have for anyone wanting to learn more about the aftermath of the Alamo.


Hunter the Reckoning: Survival Guide
Published in Paperback by White Wolf Publishing Inc. (1999)
Authors: Bruce Baugh, E. Jonathan Bennett, Michael Lee, Forest B. Marchinton, Robert Scott Martin, Angel McCoy, Deena McKinney, Wayne Peacock, Greg Stolze, and Andy Woodworth
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This book might help you build a decent chronical.
The Hunter game is a nice addition to anyones WoD collection. This book can help one to build better characers. You know onesa that can actually live for past 60 seconds.

Misnomer, but still good
When I purchased this book, I was expecting something along the lines of a a player's guide or such. What I got, on the other hand, was a sourcebook chock full of information on supernaturals around the world. Be careful that you know what this is before you purchase it. It's an excellent book and I liked it very much, but it was not what I had in mind for a survival guide.

Good book, full of potential story ideas.
I liked this book. Its written from the point of view of the hunters, a different one for each section. The book does not have any game mechanics, its pure story. It begins with a few tips for novice hunters, something you should get your players to read through. Then it goes on to describe each continent. It spends a lot of time discussing the world outside of North America, so if your planning on running a game in a different country then this is the book for you. I liked the fact that since the information is given out by hunters, it is full of various facts that are completely not true, so your players can read through the book and still not have any of the real information. Full of great story potential and well written. A good buy if your going to run a hunter's game.


Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis
Published in Hardcover by Pond Press (01 April, 2001)
Authors: Art Scott, Wallace, Dr Maynard, Richard S. Prather, and Robert McGinnis
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A Book of Narrow Focus
Robert McGinnis is one of America's most gifted illustrators and the breadth of his talent was well-documented in his art book, TAPESTRY. Pin-ups, Westerns, movie posters--the guy could paint it all. THE PAPERBACK COVERS OF ROBERT MCGINNIS, though featuring several paintings as well as pencil roughs and a couple of photo references, is not an art book, but rather is a rather pricey checklist geared toward paperback collectors. The majority of the color works are small reproductions of the actual covers as they originally appeared--and the focus is firmly on McGinnis' detective covers with the other genre's he's worked in getting barely a nod. Even so, I would have preferred to see large reproductions of the artist's trademark femme fatales unmarred by titles instead of the plethora of tiny second-generation reproductions found in this volume: the format and content is geared SO much toward the hardcore collector mentality that the editors/authors seemed to have lost track of the ART and the ARTIST they supposedly revere. A disappointment.

(Not Enough) Paperbacks Covers of Robert mcGinnis
Well, right off the bat let me just say that if you are a Robert McGinnis fan, you must have this book. The production standards are terrific and the reproductions of paintings, from the originals, are as crisp and eye-popping as you always hope for in an art book. The book is also a valuable companion volume to "Tapestry" released. last year and covers completey new ground in terms of illustrations reproduced. All this said, I do have a quibble with the thought that went into the layout. Fine coated art paper is used throughout and what did the authors do? They filled up huge portions of this gorgeous paper with a complete checklist of McGinnis paperback covers, rather than the illustrations us fans were looking for. The checklist is a valuable tool for those who wish to compile a complete library of McGinnis paperbacks, (say, 5% of the people who love the work of McGinnis), but it could easily have fit at the back of the book on cheaper stock, which would have left room for dozens (if not hundreds) of color McGinnis covers. Oh well! Still good, but it was "this close" to being great!

Good Buy For McGinnis Fans
After picking up the superlative TAPESTRY: THE PAINTINGS OF ROBERT MCGINNIS, I took a chance on THE PAPERBACK COVERS OF ROBERT MCGINNIS to see if it would be worthwhile as well.

I had some doubts THE PAPERBACK COVERS would be a good use of my money, since it sounded like it was just a grab-bag collection of cover scans that might or might not be very clean, but that wasn't what I got. It's actually basically a text listing of all the paperback covers RFM ever did, with pages showing selected groups of covers, plus background material and a number of full-page paintings.

The book's layout is clean, and so are the prints, though the cover copies are (necessarily) on the small side. However, the full-page prints are worth the price of admission. If you have to choose between TAPESTRY and PAPERBACK COVERS, I'd say pick up TAPESTRY hands-down, but if you have TAPESTRY then PAPERBACK COVERS makes a very nice accessory.


Anarchy
Published in Paperback by Alyson Pubns (2002)
Authors: James Robert Baker and Scott Brassart
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Interesting, posthumous novel by Baker
I REALLY like JRB's work. Never subtle, often over the top - but certainly exciting. This book was reworked from a manuscript discovered after his death. Like Brassart mentions in the afterward, one can see the lack of orientation/tightness to the story and that is AFTER it has been edited and reworked. This one has a plot that travels all over the world, hits the media and celebrity between the eyes and never, ever stops. A little too cartoonish and over the top. The bodycount is absolutely amazing. Sadly, there is no real depth here to any of the characters and it's outlandishness, finally, does it in. All that said, it's worth checking out if you are a fan of his work.

great book
i finished this book in one sitting, its captivating


Fluoroscopy Manual For Pain Management
Published in Spiral-bound by Pain Management Innovations (15 April, 2000)
Authors: Tina McKay Best, Kenneth Alo, Daniel Bennett, Scott Brandt, Solomon Kamson, John Oakley, and Robert Wright
Amazon base price: $174.00
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Respectfully disagree
I am a fellowship-trained interventional pain management physician, and I purchased this book with high hopes after reading the first review and the editorial summary. I received it, and promptly returned it. It really falls short in my opinion. The positioning pictures uses three pictures that really add very little to the basic knowledge of positioning the fluoroscopy unit. It does not make the effort to explain nuances of using the C-arm to open up the facet joints, etc. The pictures of the blocks performed show only the final placement of the needle, without any guidance on how to get it there, which is what is really needed in a text such as this. Furthermore, the image quality is remarkably poor in some of the shots. I think anyone interested in a guide on using fluoroscopy for pain management is better off waiting for Prithvi Raj's book, which is due in fall, 2002. His book on Pain Management is excellent and I expect nothing less with his upcoming book, which I have pre-ordered.

A Must-have Manual
We have been using this amazing, comprehensive manual in our pain practice for 4 months. The time that is saved by ustilizing the author's concise explainations of correct patient and flouroscope positioning has cut out time per procedure down and increased the quality of images 3-fold.

Included, are flouro images of each simple and complex procedure performed.

I highly recommend this manual to any radiologic technologist, interventional pain management physician, orthopedist, neurosurgeon and physical medicine and rehabilitation physician.

Radiology departments everywhere should have at least one copy for those technologists who are asked to participate in any injection or implantation procedure.

The cost of this easy-to-use book is paid for in a few days of using it!


Savage Seas
Published in Paperback by White Wolf Publishing Inc. (2002)
Authors: Robert J. Defendi, Dan Quackenbush, Scott Taylor, and Geoffrey C. Grabowski
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1st Poor Book of the Product Line
Since Exalted was released, I have been a huge fan of the setting and system and hence, purchasing each supplement as it comes out. However, this is the one supplement that I wish that I hadn't wasted my money on.

This book is nothing more than a breakdown of ship design and ship terminology. Save your money, this book is fairly worthless for a campaign.

A good book for basic info
I thought the book was pretty decent. It has stats for ships and their weapons, rules for ship to ship combat and even mass combat rules for crew vs crew fighting which could be used for other arenas of combat.
I liked the sections about life at sea and how ships are run. It also talks about the details of navigation in a world which actually is flat and where the pole used for navigation is in the center.
Savage Seas also has some new charms, mainly geared towards use at sea, some new spells, terrestrial and celestial, and a few minor artifacts.
What it didn't have were things like whole chapters about individual pirate groups, or various navies. Those things were pretty much summarized between 2 chapters. Alot of that stuff was covered in other books, or left for storytellers to customize.
All in all, if you run a sea-based series then this book will be a good resource. If you're landlocked, then you might not want to buy it.

Nautical Fantasy Fundamentals
This book has two goals:
1) give storytellers an overview of "realistic" ancient seafaring life/culture/technology; and,
2) give storytellers fantasy specifics about how 1) works in world of Exalted.
I believe it strongly succeeds on both accounts. The material is not a campaign or module per se. What it does is provide an immense amount of cool, detailed material storytellers can work into games of their own design. So if you want something to "plug and play" with minimal effort than this isn't for you. If you're looking for "thinking fuel" and inspiration ... you won't be disappointed. My favorite parts were the one's that provided glimpses of First Age ships. Loved it!!!


Microeconomics
Published in Hardcover by Prentice Hall College Div (1999)
Authors: Robert S. Pindyck, Daniel L. Rubinfeld, Scott Simkins, and Jim Barbour
Amazon base price: $91.33
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A Beginner's Text...
Although billed as a text "suitable for students with a broad range of backgrounds," as an intermediate student using it this semester in a graduate public policy program core class, I've found this book of little value. Topics are rarely covered in depth (e.g., utility effects of taxation and subsidies are consigned to roughly two pages), examples, though clearly explained, are rather basic -- mathematical formulas are scarce and calculus is nonexistent -- and the graphs are less descriptive relative to other intermediate texts. (If you've used either of Nicholson's texts, this one is certain to disappoint in comparison.) In short, beginners may benefit; others should not waste their money.

Rubinfeld scores again!!
Microeconomics is the field of play where Rubenfield slays the dragon. But in this case the dragon is microeconomics. And Rubinfield doesnt use a sword or even a crude bomb. He uses words to dismantle microecomics in a simple easy to uses book. I say, take a bow Rubinfeld, your works will live forever in the halls of Economics. Same to you Pindick. Pindick has easily shown how supply and demand weld together to show market price. Basically, this Pindick man is a genius. I cant recommend this book enough.

Microecon is not exactly the most exciting subject
I've used this book in an intermediate micro course at Berkeley, and I have to say that this is one of the best written economics books I've read. One of its greatest advantages is the clarity of explanation and abundance of visual aid such as graphs and tables throughout the book to support the material. The graphs get a bit complicated towards the last chapters, but that's only because the material that needs to be illustrated through those graphs gets complicated as well.

Second, even though I've had extensive economics background, the book could be suitable for beginners. The first two chapters give a concise overview of a basic Econ 1 course, explaining the basics of supply and demand, market structure, etc. - everything a person with little economics background needs to know to be able to understand this book. However, if you find this book to simple for you, keep in mind that Prentice Hall publishes it as "Intermediate Economics" - for use in 2nd or 3rd year in an undergraduate economics program.

Unlike many other econ textbooks I've encountered, this book is neither math-heavy nor theory-heavy - it has a good balance of theoretical information coupled with enough mathematical examples to get the message across. However, many students (and some reviewers on this website) find that there aren't enough examples and exercises (with answers) in the book - for that I'd HIGHLY recommend getting the Student Study Guide. It quickly summarizes each chapter (good for emergency test/quiz studying) and provides plenty of sample problems as it summarizes the concepts. It also includes a quick chapter quiz and gives the solutions to all problems found in the Study Guide.

Also unlike most outdated econ textbooks today, this one includes excellent chapters on Game Theory and pricing strategies. I've heard from a few business majors here at Berkeley that they're encouraged to read those two chapters as good examples of how these concepts apply to business and economics. The book features many "Sample Boxes" - small paragraphs on how the current topic of discussion has been applied in the real world. This helps understand that economics is a real science (in a sense that it can produce theories that are testable in the real world) and has some useful applications.

Overall, this is a very good economics textbook for intermediate microeconomics. The book alone deserves 4 stars, but coupled with the study guide, it's definitely a 5.


MCSE Testprep: Windows 95 (Covers Exam #70-063)
Published in Paperback by New Riders Publishing (01 November, 1997)
Authors: Jay Adamson, Rebecca Bridges Altman, Curtis Colbert, Emmett Dulaney, Dale E. Holmes, Robert Magrino, Danny E. Partain, Joseph Phillips, Paul Scott, and Jason Shoults
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Lots of Questions; Lots of Errors; Little Else
This is a cheap book with lots and lots of sample exam questions, but many, way too many errors -- dozens! Wrong answers. Answers that contradict the text on its own pages earlier in the book, and repeated questions on the same topic (at least once with two different answers!) And explanatory text on the various exam topics is nearly non-existent at times and very erratic in its depth of coverage.

A good start
This book is a good starting point for the newly revised Windows 95 (70-064) exam. I just took it and scored 857 (minimum passing score is 632). The book goes into detail on topics that are heavily covered on the exam (networking with NT and NetWare, printing, system policies), and this makes it a great place to start studying. However, the 95 exam is full of nitpicky questions that are NOT covered in this book; you need additional sources to be completely prepared. In addition to buying this book, I'd recommend downloading the Win95 Resource Kit from Microsoft's Web site and spending some time going through it, especially troubleshooting. Also search the web for "70-064" to turn up helpful links. This is one of the hardest exams in the MCSE sequence, but if you use these sources you should be in good shape.

One of three references you'll need.....
.... to pass the Win95 exam. This book is like all others in this series: Each test objective is examined in a seperate section while numerous fairly difficult questions test your knowledge. In addition, there are hands on exercises to reinforce the material. There are no pretty pictures here but this obviously helps keep the price at a very reasonable $25.00. The other recommended references would be the win95 resource kit and your hands on experience. A highly recommended book.


Special Edition Using CGI
Published in Paperback by Que (1900)
Authors: Jeffry Dwight, Michael Erwin, Tobin Anthony, Danny Brands, Ron Clark, Mike Ellsworth, David Geller, Galen A. Grimes, Matthew D. Healy, and Greg Knauss
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Real Programmers Don't Want this Book
I really enjoy the Using Series, and look for them whenever I want to learn more about a certain topic. However, this book is deplorable. It is not made for anyone looking to write their own code, or anyone who actually wants to program. All this book tries to do is show you how to use someone else's code. I do not mean another module, such as the infamous CGI.pm moudle, but rather using another script and "tweaking" it for your needs. It also does not seek to explain the theory behind the code. I was also quite disappointed in how it was organized. The Using Seies are good books, but this one doesn't belong in the family. There are much better books out there that will serve your needs.

Pooly written with incomplete examples
I found this book to be hard to read and poorly written. The examples are very difficult to follow because most are only code segments not the full code. This makes it very diffcult to follow. As any experienced programmer will tell you "Nothing helps more than a good example.". This book is highly lacking of good examples. I have several years of experience with programming in several languages, which allowed me to fill the gaps in the examples, how ever a beginning programmer would be lost. In conclusion I do not recommend this book to a programmer of any level.

Speacial Edition Using CGI
I found this book to be hard to read and poorly written. The examples are very difficult to follow because most are only code segments not the full code. This makes it very diffcult to follow. As any experienced programmer will tell you "Nothing helps more than a good example.". This book is highly lacking of good examples. I have several years of experience with programming in several languages, which allowed me to fill the gaps in the examples, how ever a beginning programmer would be lost. In conclusion I do not recommend this book to a programmer of any level.


Damascus Gate
Published in Audio Cassette by Publishing Mills (1900)
Authors: Robert Stone, Frank Muller, Scott Lasser, and Ethan Hawke
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The novel of the millenium?
Being a citizen of Jerusalem, I was impressed to see my city with no real life or ordinary people(not even one?), but populated by all kinds of crazy, misfit, junkies and people with terrible identity problems and verging on a psychotic breakdown. There is no lack of craziness and intrigue in this city, but these peole lack in depth and seem mostly unreal.
Besides, Robert Stone, seems to enjoy burdening the reader with words from several religions,slang and different places that make the novel mostly like a laberynth.

A bitter pill, but one that's good for you.
I began reading this book with very high hopes because of Robert Stone's reputation. However, this is not a book for those who don't have a photographic memory. Unless you can remember, 200 pages later, a name or Hebrew phrase mentioned briefly, you'll be lost, as I was throughout a good deal of this book. The rest of the time I just didn't care. Perhaps it is because Stone is so buy piling up the information that he doesn't pay attention to his characterizations. His characters, particularly his women, are hollow and lifeless. Their conversation is ridiculous, as if Stone mixed up Jerusalem 1992 with some bad dream from the '60s. Having complained about all that, I must say I learned a tremendous amount from this book about the current state of our world. At one point, I was forced to find a Jerusalem travel guide to make sense of all the sites -- religious and otherwise -- that Stone visited. After a while, I realized I was reading the book not for an interesting story or characters, but for a lesson in social science and geography.

Incisive look at religion and politics
There are a lot more negative reviews here than I expected to find. Many reviewers seem to be complaining that the book cover contains too many positive reviews, like it's Mr. Stone's fault that all those elitist, liberal, East coast reviewers liked his book. Truth be told, there were some elements in this book that were a bit irritating. Most of the characters speak in a coy, sardonic fashion that would drive me crazy if I heard it in real life. They also tend to be unconvincingly brilliant. I just haven't met too many drug abusing musicians that have read voraciously on every subject under the sun, and can quote by memory ancient religious texts in several languages, but there are a couple of characters like that in D.G. Nevertheless, the positives of the book totally outweighed these concerns. First of all, D.G. is set in a city that is constantly in the headlines, and he does a pretty good job at depicting the political undercurrents at work. While many will naturally complain that Stone wrote too favorably of one particular group or the other, I thought he was relatively dispassionate and balanced. The political action is kind of at the margins, however. Stone is more concerned with spiritual matters. I liked the idea of the main character, Cris Lucas, writing a book on religious fanatics. This gives Stone the chance to introduce all sorts of eclectic characters. Many people complain that Stone focuses too much on these "fanatics," and does not feature enough "average" Israelis. However, Stone has always written about marginal, disaffected characters, these are the people who interest him. If you don't want to read about people like this, then don't read Stonee. And not many novelists have written convincingly and intellectually on religious fanaticism. Besides, millenialism is hardly a marginal ideology in this day and age, just turn on the television and check out all of those suave evagelists urging Christians to support Israel. Stone has some very interesting things to say about this. And, while the main character, Mr. Lucas, may at times seem too "hip," I found him to be likeable and could sympathize with his spiritual plight. All in all, I would recommend this book to anybody who is interested in the Middle East and can read about political and spiritual matters objectively and intelligently.


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