I bought this book with the hopes of finding out a little more about William and Harry, a pair of teenage boys whose actual lives have been completely overshadowed by their father and late mother. Unfortunately this book is mostly about just that: Charles and Diana. Better to have cut out most of the stuff on them and focused on the "Boys."

It begins as the news of Diana's death reaches the Windsor family, and the reactions of the people there. Then it shoots back in time to show the lives and backgrounds of Charles and Diana, the seemingly golden royal couple whose marriage deteriorated under adultery, lies, and the piercing eye of the press. William and Harry grew up in this bizarre enviroment, and the book includes some of what they have been doing since their mother's sudden death.

This might have been a good -- albeit slim -- book, if Anderson had kept his eyes focused on Diana's boys. But at least two-thirds is barely about the boys, but a rehash of all the stuff about Diana. We've seen it all before, and Anderson's presentation is not particularly interesting. Perhaps it's because Charles and Harry, royal hijinks included, just haven't done that much of note yet.

One of the biggest problems with the book is that the author tries to cover all the bases. In the matter of these two, it's really not possible to not take sides. So, Charles let his wife suffer, stayed with Camilla, and he went off to the opera when his son was beaned by a golf club. "Charles is scum," you will be saying -- Anderson is presenting him in that light. But after that, we are presented with a more ooey-gooey, sensitive, forgiving picture of Charles as an ex and a father. It's like Anderson wrote a postscript to his Diana love note, devoted to Charles. It doesn't work! Either you think Diana was right, or you think Charles was. You cannot say that they were both okay, kindly and fine -- if they had been, then presumably they would not have broken up.

The parts about Harry and William are actually the most interesting parts of the book; there are some cute photographs and anecdotes, like William playing with a tot, working as a rap deejay (cute "rock on" gesture here), and Harry giggling at his brother's inability to get his driver's license without press attention. But like many biographers, Anderson also descends to tabloid sniggering. We're presented with entire photographic pages of William's ex-girlfriends, including First Niece Lauren Bush. there's a weird anecdote about William creeping into girls' camping tents, which is never credited to anyone or even a publication.

This book has some endearing stuff about the "Boys," marred by a spattering of tabloid material (am I the only one who doesn't care who William is dating?). But most of it is the thousandth rehash of Charles and Di's messy marriage -- better to wait until their sons get a real biography written about them.

I would have had a great deal more faith in the credibility of this book had it not been written by Christopher Andersen, who has an acclaimed reputation for digging up dirt on infamous people and portraying them at their worst, at their most vulnerable moments. However, that is the same kind of juicy, gossip that sells books and tabloids; some people will believe anything!

The book reveals how Princes William and Harry have dealt with the break-up of their parents' marriage, the death of their mother and the ever-growing presence of Camilla in their lives. It tells of the Queen's role in grooming the boys for the "Royal image" and how they have responded to her attempts. While the book does make interesting reading, if one were to take these two boys out of the public limelight and their "Royal position", they would probably react no differently from other boys around the world who have witnessed their parents divorce and their mother's tragic death.

Diana was a world-wide celebrity and one of the most beautiful ladies of our time. She exuded class and style in every life she touched. Her death was felt world-wide, particularly so in my country and in others who are a part of the British Commonwealth. It is highly likely the life lessons Diana gave her sons, and what she would have wanted for them, would be no different than what any loving parent would want for their children.

The book does go on to discuss "who blames who" for Diana's death. It is ironic that some people always seem to find a need to "blame someone" for life's trials and tribulations. I rather think Diana, being the compassionate person she was, would have raised her sons with a more positive, nurturing outlook on life, believing that forgiving the world for its tragedies is far more healing than blame.

So, how much is truth and how much is fiction? I suspect no one other than William and Harry will ever truly know the answer to that question, regardless of how many others may speculate. Everyone has the right to an opinion, but that does not make it factual. The reader will have to bear in mind the author's writing style and come to their own conclusions.

Andersen's Diana's Boys: William and Harry and the Mother They Loved explains the lives of Prince William, Prince Harry, and their family members. It tells of the scandals that the Windsors have recently been involved with and how the young princes have dealt with these scandals. The book tells of Diana's problems: her failed marriage, her battle with bulimia, and her arguments with the Queen over how the young boys would be raised. The story seems to tell more about Charles and Diana than the boys, and at times seems to be repetitive. Overall, I enjoyed the book and its description of the lives of the young princes and how they handle their royal lives: the paparazzi, the bodyguards, and the death of their mother, the Princess of Wales.

After seeing the 1998 copyright date I confess I was intrigued. AI, in any form, hasn't gotten much press lately. If you're looking for an update on the state of AI since 1990, however, this isn't it.

The book's materials are almost exclusively from 1991 and earlier. Only 3 references are given to sources later than 1991 and two of those sources are from the author himself. That said, the book still has some interesting things to say and some lasting value.

The author's approach is unique: compare standard methods in traditional software engineering to the development approaches necessary for AI work. Partridge spends a great deal of time in the book discussing the state-of-the-art (in 1990) for software engineering while making occasional comparisons to similar strategies for successful AI application development. As Partridge puts it "in attempting to engineer AI- software we subject the standard procedures of software design and development to close scrutiny--our attempts to build robust and reliable AI-software provides a magnifying glass on the conventional procedures." The author continues this scrutiny throughout the book.

One of the things that makes the book interesting is a view back at what computer science thought AI would have to solve (since traditional engineering practices would fall short). Automatic programming would be needed to help write all these new programs. Having humans do all that would introduce too many defects. Instead, we have "wizards", vast class libraries, and a much stronger set of powerful tools that significantly limit the amount of code that is written. Similarly, the need for report generators has lessened because the pervasive use of relational databases and the powerful report generation tools.

My favorite was "the problem of decompiling" when discussing reverse engineering. "decompilers are somewhere between scarce and nonexistent..." Consider the modern day UML tools such as Together/J which can take a JAR file (with only code) and reverse engineer an entire UML class hierarchy!

Because the book is not really updated from the early 1990's, there is no mention of genetic programming, no mention of speech software on desktops, and no machine vision advances are discussed, just to name a few shortcomings.

It is an interesting trip down memory lane, and has some interesting things to say about AI and SE and may be worth reading on that front. However, if you want an overview of AI, you will need to look elsewhere.