There are few books that I think truly deserve recognition as being in the ranks of the immortal "best sellers", but THIS is one of the very best. If you're new to sales, if you're an old pro... this book has something for every person who picks it up. I was stunned at the simplicity of the ideas, mainly because they wield SO much power! You cannot go wrong and would do yourself a tremendous favor by ordering this book NOW!!

Joe Gandolfo is an amazing motivator in that he illustrates the things that are necessary to succeed in sales, not just smoke and mirrors. He gives real-life examples of success and how to achieve it because he's done it all himself.

I have used this book for years, with incredible success. I just wish the authors would pump out a sequel like they promised in the first edition. This is a great recipe book for bachelors or couples who have a good sense of humor and want to whip up quick and easy romantic dinners! ... and breakfasts! ;-)

I just finished reading Larry Ferstenou's book "You Can Retire Young" and found it to be not only packed with valuable information on retirement, but also interesting and entertaining.
It's helpful not only to those who are planning for their retirement in their 40's, but also for people like me who retired at 55. Larry gives a lot of details from his personal life including success and failure. I found his personal budget items and practical suggestions to be very helpful. I especially enjoyed the way he leads the reader from chapter to chapter with finesse and continuity. A good read all around.

When I first started reading "You can retire young" I was confused why anyone would actually consider leaving the workforce early. I have always felt that our job in life is to give everything we could give until we could no longer
move. Throughout this book Larry Ferstenou has allowed me a completely different perspective on life. He has actually retired young and, more importantly, has not quit living! If anything his pace has quickened. The author's writing style is one that instills confidence that anyone can do this. He teaches you three simple rules that anyone can easily follow to build a net worth sufficient to retire. He also goes into great detail about the questions you should ask yourself before you consider retiring. With so many books out there only portraying one side of the issue it was refreshing to find one that really looks at your options from every angle. This book is well researched, well written, and down to earth. I would recommed this book not only to anyone considering retiring young but also to anyone who would like to retire at ANY point in their future!

This is probably one of the best books on the subject, in part because Larry (and his wife Kris) share exactly how they did it. Retiring young isn't going to be possible for everyone, but with this book your chances go up 1000% . One of the best things about this book is how they show you that you don't have to be "rich" you just need enough. It takes the stress and fear of failure out of making it happen.

This book is the proactive approach to managing your life style, your savings, and your investments. Don't trust Social Security or employer pension funds. Get this book and take charge of when and how you retire.

I interviewed Larry Ferstenou on "The Inside Success Show" and loved every minute of it. I believe in what he's teaching because I retired at 40 and I'm now living the dream life. Read his book and find out how you can too.
Here's some of what you'll learn from the book:
** How Larry and Kris were able to retire at ages 42 and 40 respectively
** Why you should not rely on Social Security of pension plans
** What 3 simple keys will bring you financial independence quickly
** How you can save faster than you ever thought possible.
** Why you should learn how to pick your own investments
** How to prepare for retirement even during hard times
** And much, much more ..

Randy (Dr. Proactive) Gilbert
Author of "AmazonBestSellerSecrets.com" and "Success Bound"

I am not questioning the amount of effort that has gone into the book, but some foundations upon which the book makes many of its claims are fundamentally flawed. For example, it is widely accepted (and has been conclusively proven) within the Oracle community that worrying about cache hit ratios, multiple extents, etc is a flawed methodology for tuning an Oracle database which will serves simply to misguide the novice.

Leave this book on the shelf...

In his book, Rich has merged his many years of Oracle performance tuning expertise with advanced insider techniques in an easy-to-understand way. Hundreds practical topics, undocumented references, experts tips and real life examples have made this book a must have for DBA's and any Oracle performance tuning personnel.

This book covers the tuning tips and techniques in using newest features in Oracle 8i as well as the original features in Oracle 7 or 8. As Rich's first sentence indicates, "Oracle is a symphony and you are the conductor, with an opportunity to create a world class performance", his book will help you to achieve this opportunity and to become a great tuning conductor of Oracle performance.

The first chapter of the book serves as highlight notes, which sets up five quick goals to instantly improve performance. Through the rest chapters of his entire book, readers will gain detail tuning knowledge about disk I/O, init.ora parameters, OEM, Explain Plan, table joins, hints, PL/SQL, parallel query, using V$ views, accessing x$ tables, new features and many more tips and techniques for reaching the best performance. After reading this book, be sure to share your thoughts with others in your review.

I was happy with this book and it can help u find orcale tuning problems and find results fast.

Although this book was written over 60 years ago the principles are timeless! I first read this book back in 1977 and went from a $4 per hr job to a $2,000 income from a part time business, from a 3 yr old Ford Pinto to a NEW LINCOLN MARK V. New Self-Esteem and Aliveness. I have met and known many successful people, including millionaires with net worths upwards to a 1/4 of a billion and they all attribute Think and Grow Rich as having a major role in achieving success. Truly an all- time classic anda must read for anyone serious about success. I also recommend "SUCCESS THROUGH A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE" by HILL & Clement Stone and "THE MAGIC OF THINKING BIG" by David Schwartz.

In 1992, I suffered three major crisis; loss of my job, marital seperation and loss of a loved one. These elements put me into a tailspin financially and emotionally. THINK & GROW RICH was one of two books that I read at that time and significantly turned my life around! I found myself with no money, huge debts, no friends and no job. I had lost my self esteem and felt powerless. The principles in Think & Grow Rich gave me the how to turn mylife around. After applying the technique descibed on page 36, opportunities began to come to me. Within two weeks, I found new employment actually at a higher income than before. I started a very successful part time home based business, within two months, all bills were caught up and within six months all debts were paid off! With a better attitude I started to attract new people into my life. I went from a extreme negative attitude to a positive attitude, from a negative cash flow to a positive cash flow and from a life of emptiness to a life of aliveness. I believe that THINK & GROW RICH is the very best self developent book of all time! I also own the 8-cassette tape program/course and highly recommend it to everyone. I mentioned that THINK & GROW RICH was one of two books that turned my life around, the other book was More Wealth Without Risk by Charles Givens which is to personal finance what Think & Grow Rich is to Personal Success. I make it a habit to review both books and their tape programs continously and get continued results and ideas.

For years I was stuck in a dead end position. I have a B.S. and figured that would be enough to attract opportunities to me. After talking with our companies V.P. he suggested that I read "Think and Grow Rich" He told me that the most successful people he has met, including the President of this company highly endorse it.The book had a immediate impact and positive affect on my life and carreer. Within a month I was promoted to a management position. That was after working for this company for 6 years and going nowhere. The principles in the wonderful book really do work. I am now recommending this book to all of my people which is incredible because prior to "Think & Grow Rich" I never would have considered reading, let alone recommending the positive mind books. this one is definitely different! I also recommend "SUPERSELF" by Charles Givens particularly for any management or sales person who wants the maximum in personal! effectiveness. And by the way, Superself is also a favorite book at the company that I work for!

This book is definetly for an avid fan! Christopher Golden is a great author with fantastic ideas. The graphics of this novel were outstanding, and the plot terrific. A must have for any Buffy collector

Set in the third and fourth seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is a medley of eight stories buy a variety of authors and illustrators. The keynote tale is the two part 'Food Chain,' which traces the fate of a young juvenile delinquent who first runs afoul of a high school student/very bad demoness, and then, when that doesn't work out, invokes a demon who likes murdering all his friends. Buffy, of course, to the rescue.

Other tales include 'The Latest Craze,' the story of what happens when owning miniature demons becomes a fad for the rich and snooty, and 'Double Cross' about a demon who resembles the Alien on steroids and has a knack for being in two places at once. Then there is 'One Small Promise,' a Buffy/Riley tidbit and 'City of Despair,' an interesting story that pits Buffy and Angel against each other in a final confrontation in yet another dimension. The remaining two tales are 'Bad Dog,' in which Oz is freed to so that a geek with low self-esteem can drain Willow's power, and 'Punish Me with Kisses,' a ghost story that is a bit too cute.

On top of offering a set of interesting, well conceived stories, 'Food Chain' has a stellar cast of illustrators. Both the stories and the full page artwork offer a far greater variety than the regular Dark Horse productions, which gives the reader a chance to appreciate different styles and better understand the arcane art of comic book production. If you aren't normally drawn to the graphic novel format, but want something that offers a representative sample of its potential this is the one to own.

I have just tried searching for this book (which I bought and read in 1990) on the UK Amazon site, with no success. What does that tell us about us Brits I wonder? Perhaps we don't value our creative talents enough? In my view, this is a book whose time has come, but do not be deceived by it. It reads amazingly easily and I came away with a feeling of empowerment. However, the key to producing results is still hard work, albeit on a pychological and psychic level. I have always dreamt of being a £ millionaire, but I have not yet achieved it. In fact, my reason for re-reading the book now is that I need to boost my income and achieve financial independence. I still believe I will succeed, and I believe that the Dyna/Psyc techniques described by Joe in this book are the key. The book is a tough training course in itself. It demands self-analysis, self-discipline and honesty, particularly in the section concerning self-image. I believe we owe Joe a great deal of gratitude, and if others are interested in joining me on my journey to wealth and financial independence through the applicaiton of these principles, I would love to hear from you. Christopher Simon-Evans, England.

I read Joe Karbo's The Lazy man's way to riches whilst still living in New Zealand in 1983. Joe's philosophy impressed me a great deal and not long after that I left NZ for a new life in Australia. In 1984 I began implementing the strategies and techniques from Joes' book in my own life and met with a great deal of success. Since 1989 I have been working as a personal growth and development consultant with unemployed people throughout Australia, using many of these strategies, alongside those of Anthony Robbins, Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Kiyosaki, Steven Covey and Edward de Bono in my presentations and training. Over all the results have been amazing, and my heart bursts with love and pride when I witness the changes that occur in peoples lives when they take on and apply the things Joe Karbo wrote about.Joe's book became my bible and I lost count of the number of times I lent it out and/or had to tape it back together again because it was falling apart. Eventually in 1995 it disappeared and I have been searching for it ever since. So it is with much joy that I order a new copy from amazon.com. The primary reason for this is that in my life I have been blessed with meeting so many incredible people, one of whom was Robert Kiyosaki who wrote a wonderful book called, "If you want to be rich and happy don't go to school". I have been fortunate enough to have worked with Robert for short time on one of his sojourns to Australia and he gave me some advice which I have never forgotten. That is, that no matter how many times you may read, try, do or see something, there is always some new thing to learn or some new distinction to make. This has been so true in the work I have done using Joe Karbo's The lazy man's way to riches. Dyna /psych is simple and powerful and does make a difference if you apply it with persistence, discipline and determination. The rewards, both material and spiritual are immense. Life is beautiful. Thank you Joe.

I've read about 75 of the best known self-help books, and TheLazy Man's Way to Riches is the most unusual one, and it actuallyworks! If you want to actually accomplish things, get it - but get the ORIGINAL, 1973 edition, which AMAZON.COM has in paperback and hardcover. Avoid the re-issue or the "Roadmap" workbook, both written 13 years after Joe Karbo's death. They are loaded with extraneous writing that sometimes contradicts the original text within.

I learn best by doing. When I buy technical books, I prefer those that include a lot of working examples. I have recently had an immense quantity of J2EE architecture poured into my somewhat leaky old brain, and I was looking for something that could get everything to gel together when I happened on this book. Since Weblogic Server 6.1 is the server in use on my current assignment, I bought this book with the intention of cobbling together a test environment and working through its many examples.

At first the going was pretty good. Zuffoletto has an easily readable style and, with his guidance, I got the server up and running without too many traumas. I was OK until I started to work through the RMI examples in the book. They didn't work. After some fumbling, I went to the website and downloaded the updates examples. They were quite a bit different, but still didn't work. Fortunately, I have knowledgeable friends, and we eventually filled in the gaps and got everything up and running. My first issue with the book is that this pattern repeated itself frequently.

The text itself is great, but from a practical viewpoint, the supporting examples have many gaps in them. Sometimes the errors are glaring - failure to qualify the class name when running it in the JVM. Sometimes they are quite subtle. I frequently got the feeling that the book was really written for Weblogic 6.0 and then given a slight makeover to adapt it to 6.1. In addition, the book often fails to provide the kind of detailed practical explanations of how to compile and where to place code that are vital to beginners.

I also think Zuffoletto should have spent more time working through the intricacies of managing the Weblogic Server. As it is, the book is more focused on being a general introduction to using the technologies that WLS 6.1 supports. This isn't necessarily bad, but I found myself struggling to figure out whether I had set up the parameters correctly a few too many times. In addition, I had some problems because I use MS SQL Server for persistence rather than Oracle, and so was left out in the cold a bit.

On the good side, this is a very well written book that covered an immense amount of material without getting bogged down anywhere. It starts from scratch and takes you from setting up the environment and the development team, to the various API's (JNDI, RMI, JDBC, JMS, JTA, and JavaMail), and then through the major development patters (JSP, EJB, etc.). The final third of the book focuses on Weblogic administration and support and then some time is spent on what I think of as more emergent technologies (such as SOAP). If coverage isn't always as deep as it could be, one has to keep in mind that this is a 900-page book as it is.

I guess my real problem is that the book doesn't quite live up to its hype. Which is, perhaps more the fault of the publisher than Zuffoletto and his team. It is Hungry Minds, after all, that put the '100% Comprehensive, Authoritative, and What You Need' on the books cover. Well, it's a bit more like 70%, but that isn't all bad. Had the examples been a bit more workable (perhaps by expanding on the books website) I would have been very happy with it. As it is, I don't regret reading it at all,

At last, a book that makes J2EE accessible, in the context of a real-world application server!

I found this book to be impressive at every turn. It's well written, well edited, and even has a great website to go with it. And virtually all the source code on the website works.

The authors say it's a book for learning WebLogic, not J2EE, but I disagree. I think it's a great resource for learning both. There are a lot of good J2EE books out there, but I find most of them to be a little too theoretical. This is the first one that brings J2EE down to earth.

Given that you can download WebLogic Server for free, I can't think of a better way to get up to speed on this technology than to buy this book, download the software, and get to work. The authors do an incredible job of walking you carefully through every aspect of the product, from JDBC to clustering, and everything in between. They make the most complex topics seem simple, without dumbing them down.

I work mostly with WLS, but also with WebSphere and Tomcat. This book has given me a solid grounding in concepts that apply to all three environments. If you need to learn WebLogic Server, this is the only book you need. If you need to learn J2EE but you're using a different server, don't write it off. It's a fantastic WebLogic Book, and a strong J2EE book as well.

I'm currently preparing the SUN Java2 architect certification. In this context, I read almost everything that gets published around J2EE. There are a lot of good books around but this one is special. It covers a lot of ground (JDBC, JNDI, RMI, JTA, JMS, JavaMail, servlets, EJBs, security), and at least it does this in the context of one of the most popular J2EE application servers, whilst most of the other books remain quite theoretical.
As a developer, you don't want to invest a lot of money in an application server for trying out things at home, right? I tried to make code run either in SUN's reference implementation, or by mixing open source containers like JBoss ant Tomcat (or Resin). Those are also very good products, and at the end of the day, you'll get the code running, but it's by no means a trivial task. Here, just download a 30 day free trial version of WebLogic 6.1 from BEA's site, install it, and you get the examples running immediately.
Also, considering the popularity of the platform, it's a small investment that could pay back very quickly in your next job.

In just one word: Wow!

A lot has transpired since Richard Rovere died in 1979 that makes his book outdated and irrelevant: Venona and the disintergration of the Soviet Union, for example. Both have put paid to such questions as "if there were Communists in the State Department." Arthur Herman's book "Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator" --using the revelations and documents from the former Soviet Union-- clarified these issues once and for all. McCarthy may have been an eccentric demogogue and an alcoholic (so what makes him different from many other politicians?) but history shows that he got it essentially right. Diehard communists, progressive communist sympathizers and all those misguided souls that believed and still believe that it was a "noble" cause-- will never forgive him for getting it right.

Richard Rovere should consider himself a comedian. The book has so many flaws about Senator McCarthy that I can't believe Mr. Rovere can be classified as a legitimate historian.

Declassified Soviet documents are proving that Senator Joe McCarthy was right. Biased historians like Rovere should be academically scorned for thier years of lies and distortions.

No one will be offended by Rovere's much-racking depiction of Joseph McCarthy. Seriously, how many people are there left in America, or anywhere around the world, still willing to stand up and smugly look you in the eye and say Joseph McCarthy was a necessary man fighting for American freedom in a time when Communists were hiding in every shadow? But the book, written in 1959, just isn't all that up-to-date. Of course much of the information we now know was suppressed at that time and J. Edgar Hoover--viciously complict in the development of all the Red Scare and blacklisting craziness--was still in power at the time of publication. Nobody would want to make an enemy of Hoover, so anything dealing with McCarthy and Hoover's contact is treaded over very lightly. This, unfortunately, makes the book somewhat inaccurate, which is a shame because so many dark secrets and shameful public deeds are recorded with a passion and an obvious intense desire to destroy the image of the drunken old demogogue. In 1959, just three years after McCarthy's death, and five years after his disgrace, this was an important book because so many people were still unsure of their opinions towards Tailgunner Joe. I imagine that this book made quite a difference as even Hoover himself took the opportunity to smear the late Senator, drawing comparisons to Krushchev's posthumous denunciation of Stalin. The book is certainly worthwhile for anyone interested in a recreation of the terror of the 1950s, written from the perspective of the 1950s, but there are several more contemporary biographies of Joseph McCarthy and, regardless of the fact that this one is likely written with more beautific prose, in a case study like this, information beats out pretty words every time.--Lance Polin