The author's readable style helps a lot. Also, interesting background material and history begin each chapter, and some industrial processes--glass-making, for example--are explained more fully. You won't regret reading this book, but you may be inclined to sell it when you're through.

This book is a must have for every body who is in the architecture field...it's worth every penny..

Simply put, this is one of the best technical textbooks I've ever read. It's basic stuff for someone just starting out in the discipline of architecture, but I'm keeping it as a reference for future professional use. It is clearly written and well illustrated and worth it's high price. I wish Allen would now write a book on Environmental Control Systems--everything in that field is too dry and too technical.

As an Architecture Student this book has come in very hand. It gives many details of design guidelines and is a wonderful resource book to own.

This book offers a great way for architecture students to get a handle on some of the issues related to building design. It deals with basic issues of construction including structural systems, mechanical systems, and code considerations. It gives "rules of thumb" and basic descriptions which are great for preliminary design. For example, if you need to roughly size a truss or floor system during schematic design, go the appropriate section for the system you are using, and you'll find handy charts for basic sizing. This is a great book for students who need rough "guestimates" for studio projects.

Having this book is like having a half-dozen of the best engineering consultants at your elbow-ready to answer any question that may come up during design. It reduces all the complex technical issues in building design to simple formal elements of know size that are easily merged into the architectural design process. A must-have for professionals and students alike!

I came away impressed with Mr. Renehan's prose-style, which engages one immediately and makes one sail through the book. This is, as they say, a "real page-turner." I also came away impressed with the many new sources Renehan has unearthed: aged contemporaries of Joe Kennedy Jr. and Jack who have yielded a great trove of previously-unpublished tales. But the story doesn't stop with Jack and PT-109 or Joe Jr. blowing up with his Liberator bomber over the British coast. No, Mr. Renehan also digs deep into previously unpublished correspondence between the old man, Ambassador Kennedy, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull to document the Ambassador's power-play with Hull and FDR over Chamberlain's policies of appeasement. Mr. Renehan further renders the touching, tragic story of Kick Kennedy and her brief marriage to Billy Hartington in quite a tender and wonderful manner. This book is neither hagiography nor character-assasination. Renehan is not the Kennedys' prosecutor, nor is he their lawyer. He is just a first-class historian, digging up great new information and telling the story straight, as it ought to be told. I recommend THE KENNEDYS AT WAR very highly.

Renehan is one of our finest writers of popular history. This is a decision I made long ago when I first read his THE SECRET SIX, and later THE LION'S PRIDE, both also available from Amazon. With THE KENNEDYS AT WAR, he seems to be continuing the line of inquiry he first developed in THE LION'S PRIDE: the study of gifted and prosperous young people during time of war. It is very interesting to watch what happens when Jack Kennedy and his older brother Joe Jr., both from a life of wealth, encounter the democratic (small "d") institution that is military service. A great story this, featuring characters that can't help but intrigue and engage the reader.

I picked this book up Sunday morning after reading a rave review (written by former RI governor Bruce Sundlun, who is a vet of WWII) in THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL. Nearly three-quarters of the way through, I find it delivers a refreshing and engagingly-written view of the Kennedy family during those troubled and tragic days of war. PT 109 forms only a tiny slice of the really epic story Renehan tells here. There is also Joe Jr.'s troubled life and martyrdom. There is Kathleen Kennedy's troubled coming of age and her young (nearly instantaneous) widowhood. And there is the disaster of JPK Sr.'s years at the Court of St. James's. I respectfully disagree with those who say Renehan has not done much in the way of original resarch. The sections on JPK Sr.'s ambassadorship, for example, seem (from a glance at the footnotes) to be thoroughly grounded in diplomatic correspondence at the FDR Library and in the Cordell Hull Papers, etc. Likewise Renehan has done fresh interviews with vets of the Solomons campaign, etc., etc. Renehan even interviewed the last surviving member of the PT-109 crew, who died last summer.

I just finished reading "Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862"
by Joseph L. Harsh.

Ouch!!!! Talk about painful!!! Harsh (a history professor who grew up in Hagerstown) simply cannot write!! Some people can write well; others write poorly. Harsh is at the bottom of the latter group. (I feel sorry for his students -- they probably suffered severe ear and brain trauma from his lectures. And he writes as if he were lecturing!!)

He LOVES R.E. Lee. (According to Harsh, everything that went wrong was someone else's fault -- without exception!!) Then there are Harsh's numerous "moments" when he tells you what a particular person MUST have been thinking at any given time -- as if Harsh (or anyone else!!) could know! Finally come are his analyses of various events and situations. In Harsh's eyes, all ideas that contradict his opinions OBVIOUSLY MUST be wrong -- it's just plain "foolish" to think otherwise.

It's too bad that Harsh just didn't tell what happened and allowed us to form our own judgements. (By the way, he plays pretty "fast and loose" with the facts. Plus, he omits vital information that doesn't correspond to his interpretation.)
In his preface, Harsh even has the audacity to state that, besides his book, there are only one or two other books that cover the Maryland Campaign in depth. Well, I have been studying Antietam for over 35 years, have been there several hundred times, and have read literally thousands of books, articles, and documents about Antietam. Harsh is full of it!!

If you were thinking of buying this book, don't bother. You can gain just as much by pulling out all your teeth with a pair of pliars, then dropping a 200-pound lead weight on your foot.

I agree with much the prior reviewers have said. Although I am not a Civil War buff, I found the book readable. I appreciate his methodology also. Harsh attempts to reconstruct the intelligence available to Lee when he made crucial decisions and to assess his decisions based on the moves he could have made given what he knew and in light of his strategic aims for the campaign. All historians should stick by this method. He also does a very creditable job in his attempt to ascertain what Lee knew. On balance very well researched and well argued. I especially enjoyed the end in which he places his argument within the context of existing historiography on the subject. One criticism I have relates to the maps, which is discussed in the review of one of Dr. Harsh's other books. I bought Landscape Turned Red as the result of reading Taken at the Flood. And the maps are much more helpful in that Sears's book. When you are dealing with a lot of different place names and different corps moving around, it makes the flow a lot easier.

(Disclaimer: I sat in on a few classes of Dr. Harsh's as an undergraduate).

Much praise has been heaped on Dr. Harsh for this defining work on the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Awards have rolled in - perhaps the setup for the Pulitzer Prize for his planned upcoming works on the Union Side of the first two years of the American Civil War in the eastern theatre. Certainly, Harsh's approach of - what did they know, when did they know it, what did they do with information? - represents a step forward in understanding this critical campaign. Perhaps this method is taken a little too far, perhaps the author is too contrarian, eager to dispel existing notions and overturn previous judgements, but that's the fun of it - great academic arguments will result. Harsh's academic method - he is currently Professor of History at George Mason University, a school that he originally lobbied to be called "The University of Northern Virginia" (non-ACW fanatics didn't get it) - is unquestioned. A critical, thorough survey has been conducted of available original source material as well as established secondary sources. All told, it is an amazing story. This work is the result of decades of labor on this subject (Harsh is a native of Hagerstown, MD). One of the great points to be made here is that Lee was human after all, he made some significant mis-judgements. If you didn't know it from other exposures to Dr. Harsh you couldn't deduce from this work that Harsh consider Lee to be one of our countries finest soldiers. Even the best have their bad days - or campaigns, in this case. This is an absolutely first rate work on one of the most important (Harsh obviously believes the most important) campaigns of the ACW. Unfortunately, because of its academic format and size, it will not reach wide audiences. For those willing to make the effort, they will be richly rewarded.

I just received the book and I immediately turned to the index to search for NETWORK DRIVERS. Nope. Well, the introduction chapter will tell you "what we don't cover" (this important omission should of been mentioned in the online book excerpts):

The book does not cover: File Drivers, Network Drivers, Graphic Drivers and User Mode Drivers.

One would think that in this day of age of Communications, High End Speed Games, etc, that a rather large book titled "Developing Windows NT Device Drivers" would cover these important device drivers. At a minimum, its should of covered NDIS Device Drivers. It does not.

No good for windows 2000 or XP, otherwise very good and informative. Code available from authors sites, but buggy (on XP anyway). Shame it's out of date, if a legacy driver will do you then this book is very good.

It's totally great to hear the inside scoop from the experts. I love the real experience grey comments. A very tough subject covered in great depth but still very readable. A device driver classic! Forget the other driver books and buy this one!

. . .which is equally useful for the Protestant or Catholic academic.

If you desire an academic commentary which covers the entire corpus of Scripture in a single volume, this is the book for you. Named after the premier Scripture scholar of the Patristic period, it is an update of the Jerome Biblical Commentary of more than a quarter century ago.

Not only is every book of the Bible discussed in detail, there are numerous scholarly articles dealing with history, critical methods, contemporary issues and the like. It's perspective is honestly centrist; catering to neither the fundamentalist, nor to the deconstructionist. Controversial issues are handled in an appropriate manner, giving numerous bibliographic citations representing a wide range of learned opinions.

Although Catholic in orientation, the book is equally valuable to believers from other faith traditions, and indeed, to non-believers as well. Its editors, especially the late Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmyer represent the very best of Catholic critical scholarship.

This book is probably not the best choice for the average layman; it presupposes a certain familiarity with theological academics. However, it is indispensible for the seminarian, the graduate student, the clergy, and the academic.

(For an "informed layman's" version, please see my review of the excellent "New Jerome Biblical HANDBOOK").

I heartily endorse this book.

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary is a great reference book for scholars and pastors who need a single volume of biblical commentary near at hand. The articles are written by some of the greats of biblical scholarship, and offer remarkably in-depth analysis, considering that one volume covers the entire Christian Scriptures. Of special help to students and scholars are the bibliographies at the end of each article. While not up-to-the-minute (the most recent edition of the NJBC is 1991, I think), the bibliographies often point out the most important books and articles written on the Bible in the past 30 years. I heartily recommend this book!

This is the revised and updated version of the famous volume named for St. Jerome, the great Christian biblical scholar who insisted that "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." I am certain that he would be honored that his name graces the title of this commentary, which has been helping pastors and students for decades.

Inside this work you will find the books of the Bible listed individually, with detailed commentary on verses and even partial verses. Prior to the detailed commentary, a helpful historical sketch is given to assist the reader in situating the particular biblical book in its context. It includes maps and charts.

Though this volume comes highly recommended, it is not always on the "cutting edge" of biblical scholarship. If you choose to utilize this volume, you have made a wise choice, but you should not limit your library to this commentary alone.

all-eye(wendigo-story) and glimpses (sorcery/yog-s.) were the two i really liked here. they had enough suspence. as for the rest.... there are no truly bad stories here. and they are surely professionally written. my problem with them is that they spend too much time "building". telling the complete life story of someone, is utterly unnecessary. there were too much building here. i wish there was more invested in descriptions, endings and good old-fashioned suspence. they simply didn't give me enough while i read them.

This is a reprint of a DAW original anthology from the mid-70s. I read the book back then and thought it was so-so. The Fritz Leiber "Terror from the Depths" was very good, and Leiber brought his usual skill to the Cthulhu Mythos. The Eddy Bertin story and the Lumley stories were good as well, but they stood out like stars amid the rest of the pieces.

When I first picked up this book, I was merely going out to replace something I had read long ago and had enjoyed immensely. Still, when I started going through it, I saw some noticeable changes that actually helped it out and are worth noting. See, while this is the second revised edition of this book and many have already checked out the first, there were some changes in the lineup that made it different from the original. First, the stories by Ramsey Campbell and Brain Lumley were slightly revised, making them flow more appropriately. Next, "Zoth-Ommog," by Lin Carter, was dropped and replaced with Robert Price's "Dope War of the Blank Tong," a change that would be upsetting if it weren't for Lin's own set of stories being published and, lastly, "The Feaster from Afar," by Joseph Brennan, was left out and replaced with A.A. Attansio's "Glimpses."

In this edition of the continual homage paid to Lovecraftian lore, there are two above average tales and five standout pieces that bring this 258 page edition to life, making it well worth buying. Briefly breaking some of them down and leaving out two well-crafted pieces, ( "Darkness, my name is," by Eddie Bertin, and The Terror from the Depths," by Fritz Leber, which spatial constrains keep me from going into detail about) and one above average tale ("Where Yidhra Walks, "by Walter Debill, Jr.) they are:

"The Fairground Horror," by Brain Lumley, deals with the great tentacled one's priests and the mark they bare. It begins by focusing on Hodgson's Funfair and a man named Anderson Tharpe who has recently added a new freak-house frontage called "Tomb Of The Great Old Ones." Within it are the normal oddities that freakshows like to use, the cons that have been sold throughout the ages, but there are also some other things, pieces taken from his younger brother, Hamiliton. Without delving too much into it, this is basically a lesson in why you should try to play with things belonging to the sleeping old one.

"The Silence of Erika Zann," by James Wade, plays off of a previously introduced idea by modernizing it, placing Erich Zann's granddaughter in a Rock Band that delves into some odd forums. Any time they play, there is a strange roar that seems to come from nowhere, and it seems to be taking its toll on her. What is it, the main character asks over and over? Well, its an above average tale that is good but loses some ground when compared to the works around it.

"All-Eye," by Bob Laerhoven, is an odd mixture of story with a surprise ending. Initially, I wasn't certain I would like it at all because it seemed like the basic forum introduced, the "found a book, it had a map, I went looking and something happened" story design, but that quickly changed when I read all the way through. Its hard to say that much about it without ruining the story, so I'll simply state that the style used pleasantly different.

"The Tugging," by Ramsey Campbell, shows exactly how talented this word painter actually is, with his analogies and comparisons actually deserving a bit of acclaim. It focuses on Ingels, a man plagued by dreams that he and his father seem to share. When he sleeps he dreams of a city beneath the waves and that the clouds in the sky are becoming something, but he always awakens before he find out exactly what that is. The dreams provoke a dread for sleep, an insomnia that begins to interrupt reality, and before Ingels knows he sees a correlation between both realms as they mesh together. Again, without giving away too much, this story is well worth you time to read.

Glimpse, by A.A. Attansio, is an odd tale involving the Lord of Holes himself, Yog-Sothoth, revolving around an oddly pierced stone that defies description. Sometimes it seems like a simple stone, other times it seems like a strange congammeration of ribbons. Our initial main character, Gene Mirandola, is given it when he goes to meet with his uncle, an oddly eclectic individual that tells him to take it to a Dr. Marc Souvate. Well, he does, and finds out the oddities of the One-in-All and All-in-One, things that deal directly with his uncle and that deal with Souvate's odd history as well. The story takes a strange turn in the center, taking a simple threat to one soul by Yog and his followers to one that threatens the entirety of the world. It's actually really well done.

The next, by Robert Price, is entitled "Dope War of the Black Tong," Its a story revolving around the Tcho-Tcho and their worshipping habits, reminding me very much of something Robert E. Howard would have done. It has all the essentials; a storyline, some tentacles, a bit of death, and Asian oddities.

Again, this set of stories is well worth checking out because their focus is not uniformed and their styles certainly differ. It is in this variety that you gain something, something wonderfully evil, and evil meshing with all-encompassing madness is always a wonderful thing.

I felt sorry for the duke, he must have been such a lonely man.....He never got any compliments from his father or his family. They all seemed so far away from each other. No wonder he fell in love with Wallis, she paid attention to him, this is what he needed, someone to treat him with respect and high regard, no wonder he abdicated....He wouldn't have to abdicate,but the P.M. at that time was a very vicious and ugly person who was JEALOUS of King Edward, he wouldn't even allow the king to speak to the other members on his own behalf...Queen Mum was also jealous and vicious, she did not like Wallis, because she was divorced and an american, she would not allow King George to communicate with the duke after he was exiled. The people all wanted King Edward to become King, they all loved him because of his charistma and his feelings for the common people.Edward and Diana were very much alike and treated VERY BADLY by their so called "royal families". Edward and Diana had more "guts" than all the royals together. King Edward would have been a "great" king, thanks to Queen Mum and her coldness toward Edward and Wallis caused him to live in an empty wrld. All the worl loves "lovers"and the Duke and Duchess were the lovers of the 20th century. How many people can have such a love????????I really loved this book and read it over and over.....

I can't help it. Even though I believe that the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor were probably two of the most self-serving people ever to exist on the face of the planet, I find them totally fascinating. And this book lets us into their domaine. Imagine a man so totally mesmerized by this woman, that not only did he leave her a fresh flower on her pillow every night of their married life, he slept surrounded by photos of her (separate bedrooms). There were 10,000 photos of them in his bathtub (covered with a mahogany top. He ONLY showered.) that were discovered after her death. That means for the duration of the time that they were married, they were photographed approximately 300 times a year. Every year. The photographs of the refurbished decor in the Paris house were fascinating. Too bad everything was sold after Dodi & Diana's death. This book is truly a window into a lifestyle that no longer exists.

I was very impressed with the photography and the information contained in this book. Wallis Simpson is amazing, she comes off as more chic and more royal than any of the royals. Fascinating inside look into that very glamorous era, and it's most powerful couple.

This book offers a very comprehensive look at microbiology and virology (with some immunology and parasitology thrown in); unfortunately, that's not a good thing if you're trying to study from it. The chapters are full of information on lab values and other minutiae that will be of interest to only those who make a living in the field. Otherwise, you'll have to search hard to pick out the relevant details that are worth remembering. There are definitely better, easier to use books on the market than this one

This edition have news about micobiology.

depending on the focus of your course, this might not have enough clinical case-related material. Great for the "big flick" with a very well laid out presentation (not enough pix or graphs), very good overall. Lot's of people in my class chose the Appleton and Lange (same publisher) 'Review" version of this book (blue cover).

From the outset I was very intrigued by this book for its bold take on the authorship question. Sobran presents his evidence in a very scholarly and concise way that does not alienate the lay reader or the Elizabethean scholar. However, I must say that Sobran makes the same mistake that all Shakespearean scholars seem to make when writing or doing research on the works. These stories were plays and need to be viewed in that light and not as novels or as poetry. In performing Shakespeare's plays, I have noticed uses of certain words and phrases that are consistent across many of the them, showing that they were written by the same person. Shakespeare was a child of what would be considered today the middle class and attended a Stratford school that among other things taught Latin. Hardly the education or social background of "country bumpkin". The issue of the will not being up to the standard of the plays is ridiculous. The will served as a means to protect his youngest daughter's inheritence from a man he despised and for the settlement of his estate, not as a theatrical project to which he loved. The issue of Shakespeare's lack of knowledge of far away lands is as well ridiculous, because the settings of many of the plays were patterned after a typical English town or city with a foreign name slapped on there for the setting. If the Earl is the author, where did he learn to write plays? In this time acting was considered an extremely lowly profession. Why would a man trained in leading arts of his day and in an age where nobles were known and encouraged for writing great works, choose to write in secret and in such a lowly form? Also to use Sobran' own arguement: "How would a nobleman know so much about regular townspeople?" The plays are full of well formed and interesting non noble characters. How would a man so removed from the daily lives of these people know so much about them? Sobran's book while interesting and thought provoking fails to provide an adequate substitute or cast considerable doubt upon the man from Stratford.

Joseph Sobran has written an elegant and persuasive condensation of the case for Edward de Vere's authorship of the Shakespeare canon, updating the previous efforts of passionate and intelligent students of the Shakespeare question such as Charlton Ogburn Junior, Bernard M. Ward and John Thomas Looney.

The book deserve five stars for cogently and persuasively presenting a much-maligned theory which counts among its recent adherents such intellectual lights as Derek Jacoby, Michael York, John Gilgud, Mortimer Adler and Supreme Court Justices Blackmun, Powell and Stevens.

As other reviewers have noted, it does not matter so much whether Sobran's arguments are correct -- this reader finds many of them persuasive -- as that the subject itself warrants serious and sustained attention. At present champions of the orthodox Shakespeare retain their intellectual monopoly within higher education primarily by means of excluding non-specialists such as Sobran from the debate over the Shakespeare question and vociferously denying, against a host of contrary evidence, that the subject even exists.

On the contrary, anyone who cares for the future of literary studies should acquaint themselves with the arguments made in this book. Not all of them are, in my opinion, equally valid. But that is no cause to ignore or belittle Mr. Sobran for tackling an important question which (sorry) ain't going to disappear just because a few powerful Shakespeare industry insiders insist on feeling threatened by it rather than seeing it as one of the greatest boons which could befall a shrinking intellectual discipline.

"Shakespeare" has never been more interesting or more real than he is in this book.

For readers in search of a compact, intelligent, entertaining introduction to the authorship question -- a question which is only now, after many years of suppression and neglect, beginning to come into its prime as one of the great questions of our day -- this book is a great place to begin.

Roger Stritmatter

This is a fascinating book that makes an very solid case for Edward DeVere, Earl of Oxford, as the true author of Shakespeare's works. Sobran breaks down all the myth and reverential pseudo-biography that exists around Shakespeare into a list of known facts. There is a temptation to bill anyone who questions the authorship of the man from Stratford as a member of the lunatic fringe, however Sobran is a careful journalist. He uses documented evidence to build a case against the curiously personality-less figure of the historic William Shakespeare being the author of such works. He convinced me, on literary and sociological grounds, that it was far more likely that Oxford is the author of the works. Fascinating and easy to read.