What a SUCK-FEST! This is the worst book I've read in a long time. The (unlucky) 13 authors seem only slightly concerned with plot continuity, and the result is like a novel with every third page torn out. Characters come and go, and come back again for no apparent reason, other than to satisfy the authors' self-indulgent egos. In particular, the chapters by Elmore Leonard and Vicki Hendricks were appallingly bad. Hendricks ignores all the preceeding chapters and suddenly changes the eponymous manatee from an aquatic pinhead into some amalgam of Lassie and the Hardy Boys. In a later chapter Carl Hiaasen openly mocks this sudden swerve in character. (Tip: avoid books where one co-author ridicules another co-author's writing) Elmore Leonard contributes a time capsule that might have been hip 25 years ago, with a black character refering to someone as a "cat", and in the very next sentence actually using the phase "shuck and jive". I am very happy I checked this book out of the library, instead of squandering 22.95 on this train wreck of a book

OK, thirteen of Miami's favorite writers are sitting around a campfire (this isn't a joke). Dave Barry kicks off a story involving a couple hit men, a manatee, a 102-year-old woman and a box containing the head of Fidel Castro, and passes it to the writer to the left. The next eleven writers circle the story around the campfire in an attempt to blend this motley cast of characters (and heads) into the literary equivalent of a refreshing Miami Beach smoothee.

Throwing in monkey wrenches, stranger characters and even more heads-in-boxes in the process, they mostly succeed in creating a wholly unbelievable, extremely offbeat and wildly entertaining mystery. Poor Carl Hiassen (of Striptease fame) is challenged with tying up all the loose ends without playing the Demi Moore card, and succeeds in delivering an ending as strange as a manatee is large.

Above all an interesting experiment, Naked Came the Manatee is also an entertaining quick read.

Booger is the answer to the walls talking. Suspend belief and enter the world of a manatee that thinks, feels and reasons like us. He becomes involved in a mystery not as a victim, but as a participant in important events. The concept of a manatee detective aiding the likes of Brit Montero in solving the case of the Castro heads is only exceeded by the writing of this by the many different writers, from Dave Barry to Carl Hiaasen. No mystery should be this much fun

I bought this book expecting a real debate between the three views mentioned, namely, Young Earth Creation, Old Earth Creation, and Theistic Evolution. The reason I found it disappointing is for two main reasons. None of the contributors really talk about the evidences for their position, but instead ramble on about their philosophy of science. Van Till spends most of his time trying to convince people to call his perspective the "fully-gifted creation perspective" instead of theistic evolution. To me, it really was just playing with words in order to avoid the negative Christian response to evolution. Does Van Till believe in Darwinian evolution or not? He says he does, so why not Theistic evolution? His view, as he expresses it, is really Deism, although he protests that it isn't. Read what he says and decide for yourself. My other major complaint with the book was that instead of the proponent of each view responding to the other two views, the responses were made by a third party "panel". I found this to be extremely unsatisfying.
The book wasn't totally without merit, and all three perspectives had some good things to say - but it got lost in a lot of wordiness about "words" which really took away from the book as a whole.

This book consists of essays by proponents of each of the three views (Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Theistic Evolution) and commentaries by practitioners of four disciplines: Biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and science. The entire discussion is concluded by summaries by Philip Johnson, an advocate of intelligent design, and Richard Bube, an advocate of theistic evolution.

The result is only partially successful. I am particularly impressed with the essays by Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds (Young Earth Creationism) and Howard J. Van Till (Theistic Evolution). Both give lucid and reasoned presentations of their views. I was pleasantly surprised to see Nelson and Reynolds, neither of whom I have read before, forego some of the more common but already discredited scientific arguments for a young Earth. Van Till presents a well thought-out and challenging integration of science and theology.

I am very disappointed by the commentaries, however. My first complaint is that the commentators sometimes seem unwilling to critique the essays primarily within their own expertises. For instance, John Jefferson Davis spends much of his space discussing the fossil record. On the one hand, none of the other commentators talk about this important piece of evidence. On the other hand, I wish the editors could have found someone other than a theologian to do this.

My second, more serious complaint is that each of the four commentators speaks entirely from an Old Earth Creationist perspective. In fact, Walter Bradley (who is supposed to provide criticism from a scientific perspective) uses the space allotted for commentary on the Old Earth Creationist perspective to attack the positions later presented in the Theistic Evolution essay. The reader is deprived of any scientific critique of the Old Earth Creationist view and instead finds a philosophical objection to a view not even presented yet. I find that entirely inappropriate.

As a brief introduction to the thinking in the three perspectives on creation and evolution, the primary essays in this book are very good. They each present some of the strengths and weaknesses of their own positions. These are not explored fully, but each essay is well referenced for further reading. The commentaries could have benefited by a better selection of commentators, however.

i've read in the field of creation-evolution for nearly 30 years now, from the _genesis flood_ to _darwin's dangerous idea_. that certainly doesn't make me an expert, only a concerned layman. this book is addressed by christian's to christian's, not that anyone outside of that community won't get a great deal out of the discussion only that the emotional desire/impetus to seek answers pushes christian's with a high view of scripture to try to reconcile the two biggies in their lives: science looking at general revelation and theology looking at scriptures. if you're not part of this community it is much easier just to ask "so what?" and not to understand why this is such a personal topic.

this is a first book, that is suitable for educated people to delve into a topic where many of the other books in this field/topic presume a background in either science or theology, or where the books are so stridently biased as to be "preaching to the choir" and put off 'newbies' with their presentation.

the issues are presented well enough that i think if someone finishes the book they will have a reasonable idea of what the problems are and where the different parts are most concerned in the discussion. it is not a scientific or theologically based book but rather philosophic. it presents concerns from each viewpoint, thus showing relative priorities in what each person discusses first and critisies as lacking emphasis in the other viewpoints. this is one value in a debate type of format, it can leave you with a prioritized idea of what people find important in the issues.

one problem however with this debate framework is that each person reading the book who already have committments to issues or positions tend to cheer for their side and boo down the opposing sides. this is evident from the reviews posted here, the young earth creation team is not the big names in the field, so it looks like in suffers from lack of heroes. nay, the two philosophers defend the position well given the page constraints they faced.

there is one issue running through the book i wished everyone had addressed in a more explicit matter, that is the difference in accepting the functional materialism of science versus the uncritical acceptance of a materialist world and life view of scientism. there is much confusion between the two, you can see it in much YEC criticism, in this book as well, of both progressive creationism and theistic evolution. naturalism is the idea that what we see is what we get, no god's behind the curtain, no skyhooks to come down and rescue us. there must be a distinction between how science uses this idea as a working hypothesis, as a functional means to an end, versus how a philosophy uses it as an axiom. of the 3 viewpoints, only vantil talks to the separation of the two. the YEC's fault the other two positions as if they accepted the materialism/naturalism as a deep committment in their systems. which as christian's is simply unacceptable from the beginning.

i liked the book. i think if you need a place to start it supplies one. however if you are already committed to a position you would be better off served by jumping straight to one of the major works in each viewpoint. and interact with that author without the polemics that form the debate structure of the book.

This book is not based on Visual Studio.Net Final Release!

I have read the book front to back including introduction page. I just realized that the book was based on beta 2 of Visual Studio.Net, too late for a refund. Anyway, I went on to read it and found out that the book was not very much organised as tons of '...we'll discuss this on chapter xx ... ' appear no less than 5 times in a single chapter (on some chapters). Mispelled words also are catching enough to say that this book was in a hurry to be printed.

If you're looking for a book that covers thorough details on window forms and web form control howtos, this wouldn't give you enough detail on those topics. Web Services is equally a mere introduction, with about two pages of discussion on UDDI as well as WSDL. Not much on ADO.Net and XML.

I should have borrowed this book instead and skim through it or should have bought it for 20 bucks less. Besides, it's already outdated. I hope the same authors would come up with a second edition that has richer detail...and send me a free copy.

I was planning on buying this book and noticed the out of print note on the Wrox site. Not exactly sure what out of print means.
Looks like other books based on the betas say out of print on the Wrox site.
If this book was released in August 2001 then it should have been based on the beta. They might plan on releasing an updated version.

I'd say this is the best Professional VB.NET book so far. I like the the ADO.NET part and VB control part of this book. Better than O'really ASP and VB book.

This is not, as the reviewer below suggests, a book for "die-hard fans". Rather, it is a book for Tolkien *scholars*. Most Tolkien scholars, of course, are fans-- and a good number of fans are also scholars-- but the two sets are not identical.
Essentially, this book consists of the proceedings of (i.e. the papers presented at) the 1992 Conference on Tolkien that took place at Oxford on the 100th anniversary of his birth. It comprises several dozen short papers on a variety of Tolkien related subjects. The papers are divided into ten major sections: 1. Recollection and Remembrance, 2. Sources and Influence, 3. The Lord of the Rings, 4. The Silmarillion, 5. Linguistics and Lexicography, 6. Response and Reaction, 7. Tolkien Studies, 8. Middle-Earth Studies, 9. The Inklings, 10. Flights of Fancy. Some sections are much longer than others, and a few papers that were presented are not included because no written copy was submitted.

Of the various papers, a few are by renknowned scholars of Tolkien-- philologist Tom Shippey, bibliographer Wayne Hammond, literary scholar Verlyn Flieger, etc. There are also a few other 'surprises' by folks who are clearly among the up-and-coming crop of new Tolkien scholars. There is, however, some non-scholarly material mixed in here. Most of really kooky stuff is in the last section, butto be honest, quite a few of the purportedly scholarly articles in the other sections have an amateurish character to them-- both in style and substance (And, of course, the reminscences in part 1 aren't especially scholarly themselves... although they are still valuable to the Tolkien scholar for their anecdotal/historical value)
Of the various papers here, the most successful are those in the sections on Sources and Influences and on Linguistics. Of these, the most insightful are Chris Seeman's article on Tolkien's relation to, and reconceptualization of Romantic literary theory (a very astute piece of intellectual history) and T.A. Shippey's discussion of Tolkien and the Gawain-poet (i.e. the author of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"). Sadly, those works which address Tolkien's fiction directly-- i.e. those in the sections on the Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion sections-- tend to be on the weaker side., while those in the rather vaguely defined sections (i.e. "Tolkien Studies" & "Middle-Earth Studies")are very weak indeed. The two exceptions to this are Hammond's "Tolkien and the Critics" (which perhaps ought to be called "Tolkien and the Reviewers" since he's really speaking about reviews that appeared in newspapers), and Anders Stenstrom's "A Mythology? For England?" (a careful piece of analysis that shows that Tolkien never appears to have really used the phrase 'mythology for England' to describe his fiction, but rather indicates that this overused catchphrase seems to be the result of Humprey Carpenter's conflation of some other references). A big disappointment here, though, is Shippey's paper on "Tolkien as Post-War Author", which just seems somewhat thin and vague-- a real surprise considering the strength of his other article here and his book _The Road to Middle-Earth_.

This conference took place nearly ten years before the time I write this review-- but it does reveal several things about the state of Tolkien studies then and now. The first of these is that Tolkien scholarship is still strongly rooted (peraps too strongly?) in a biographical approach. As one looks at the footnotes in this volume, one discovers reference after reference to Tolkien's letters, to Carpenter's biography, and to works like "On Fairy Stories", in which Tolkien outlines his theories of literature. There are very few footnotes for references to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. (Also, I think it is no accident that those sections on LotR and the Silmarillion happen to be the shortest and the weakest ones in the book-- or that there is no section devoted to _The Hobbit_ at all!_) This seems to me to be a bit of a shame-- as Tolkien's literary legacy is far more important and profound than his thoughts on philology or his theories of authorship, or his trip to Holland... and it also seems to me that more effort ought to be spend discussing Tolkien's fiction on its own terms, as works that can stand on their own, without such an overwhelming focus on matters of authorial intent and self-interpretation.
When all's said and done, this is certainly a worthwhile book for the Tolkien scholar-- or a research library-- to acquire. Not everything in it will be equally useful, but it's certainly better than a lot of other collections of Tolkien scholarship.

I was hoping this would be the sequel to the awesome beginners asp database book by John Kauffman. It was not even close. This book trys to cover so many platforms that it ends up not covering anything very well. The examples are terrible and confusion will set in after the second chapter. I have found that with Wrox books, if there is more than one person on the cover, then it will stink up the place.

My favorites were Section 5,7 and 8. The case studies were okay. Good cover on MTS and Novell Directory Services with ASP.

As a reviewer for this book I have read the book from cover to cover. The strong point about this book is that it covers many different aspects of data access. If you are somewhat new to ASP this book will show the ropes on ADO, XML and how to mix data from many different sources. If you are an experienced developer this book covers many areas that will interest you - data warehousing, the use of several different DB other than the very familiar SQL Server and non-realtional data sources. I have taken my copy of this book to work and everyone wants to borrow it.