Kind of boring. He glosses over a lot of stuff that could be good reading real non-chalantly without any explanation. For example, he states that he and several of his guys shot at any Japanese pilot they could find floating in a parachute, no analysis or explanation provided. This would have been an interesting topic to hear more about! On the last page of the book in the epilogue he says that he latter rose to command a carrier but then navy asked him to retire because "the navy didn't need a captain who couldn't handle his liquor". Then the book ends practically right at that sentence. Again, that would have been interesting subject to explore, but again no explanation or analysis. The book was kind of lame, but the picture on the front did get me thinking about building the 1/32 scale corsair model so all was not lost.

for a better account of WWII combat in the air over the pacific, read Saburo Sakai's "Samurai", or Samuel Hynes "Flights of Passage", or "Aces Against Japan" all much better books.

Tom Blackburn's account of VF-17 in World War II does a better job at making a reader feel like they are involved in the scenery of air combat than does Greg "Pappy" Boyington's Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Overall, I was much more entertained, but still came away wanting more than was given. The book does not have the grand sweep of an Amrose book covering a whole theater, but still does a good job at retelling this piece of aviation history.

A must for anyone who is interested Military Aviation. Tom Blacburn's novel, The Jolly Rogers, oulines the genisis of one of the most well known US Naval Fighter Squdrons in existance - with the Skull and Cross Bones still flying today on the F-14B's of VF-103. In two combat tours, the Jolly Rogers not only broke the backbone of Japanese resistance about the Soloman Islands - destroying 154 Japanese aircraft, but also vindicated their belief in the fighting ability of the F4U, having earlier refused to give up their beloved Corsairs for F6F Hellcats. Vividly written, it allows the reader to glimpse what life on the frontline must have been like, through Tom Blackburn's own experiences and feelings. Sometimes funny, always frank and moving, this novel is a must for anyone wanting a comprehensive library on Military Aviation - or with an interest in the Jolly Rogers

Way too general. I was looking for more detailed and specific installation & tuning help for Postgresql database on Linux. The book provided a quick overview and the high points, but certainly not enough to get the product installed & optimized. It's coverage of GUI tools provided only an overview, with not enough info to even persue it.

My copy is now really well dogeared because of how much I'm referring to it. I've recommended this book to many of my colleagues as it's a great reference.

This book is very well done- clear and concise. I'm very interested in databases on Linux, especially with Sybase. This book does a really strong job clarifying Sybase, and explaining such things as Testing, Design, Configuration, etc. I do recommend this book to anyone working or planning to work with databses on Linux.

Anthrax and smallpox get all the public's attention when it comes to biological weapons, but many biologists have warned that the greater threat is against agriculture. Attacks on livestock and crops could have much more profound impacts on a society than could many anti-personnel agents. In this slim volume, Simon Whitby sets out to demonstrate this thesis.

The book has the expected components: a brief outline of plant
pathology, a review of the effects of disease on crop yield and its effects across the world. It also uses declassified US documents to assemble a history of US anticrop warfare research and a large chapter on the planning of a possible attack on China's rice crop.

The overall view is historical and the chapters on the history of the US program are the most interesting and illuminate many interesting points. However, Whitby is a policy wonk and he keeps on charging off the track into thickets of policy that are are not relevant to his thesis. There is a large section on how Vannevar Bush manoeuvered himself into a dominant position in the wartime scientific research establishment. Whether Vannevar Bush or Kate Bush was in charge of scientific research at the time is irrelevant. The person having the greatest effect on vulnerability to anti-crop biological warfare was already in Washington and doesn't get mentioned in the book at all. Other excursions into the policy debate are more interesting, such as
Cuba's efforts to get two thrips included in the list of anticrop agents which highlights the challenges and the highly political nature of the topic. It is a highly political topic, but I do not see policy issues as relevant to an analysis of the nature and effects of anti-crop warfare.

As a policy wonk Whitby does not appear at all comfortable with the science. He spends many pages in lengthy quotes to define terms that he could have covered in a few lines and comes up with strained repetitive writing. Later in the book he pleads shortage of space. He also makes a number of technical errors (Phytophthora was taken out of the fungi half a decade ago; witches' broom isn't caused by a fungus.) Scientific
names are often inaccurate or outdated and the partially translated table of insect pests that Nazi Germany investigated is largely useless. However, there is a good discussion of major crops and their pathogens.

Does he prove his point? Not entirely. Apart from the policy debates, the book centers on declassified, and also very old, research from the United States. The documents show that anti-crop warfare was taken seriously and that target crops had been identified and the technical, logistic, and tactical problems were addressed and that ways to cause great damage were considered. Things have changed. Some of the agents not used in the 1950's may be useful now because of advances in technologies such as microencapsulation and culture methods. New agents have appeared, we have a much greater understanding of the relationship between crops and their pathogens and we have better defenses. The landscape of 2003 is very different from that of 1953, 1963, and even 1993.

More importantly, the book does not look at changes in agriculture and in crop plants in the past 50 years. The person not mentioned by Whitby who may have greatly increased crop plant vulnerability, but who also did so much good for US agriculture was Vice-President Henry Wallace. Wallace was a plant breeder. He greatly increased the yield and improved the agronomic performance of corn (maize) by selective breeding. He did this by bringing corn under control. He established a group of highly inbred lines that could be crossed and recrossed and selected and screened for the sort of performance farmers wanted. The consequence of this was that he also narrowed the genetic variability available to the plant breeder. All the plants in any field of cereals are genetically almost identical, they share the same strengths and the same weaknesses. A pathogen that attacks any one plant of a variety will attack them all. The ability to introduce weaknesses into plants is demonstrated by the accidental introduction of susceptibility to Southern leaf blight by corn breeders in the 1980's. Brief case studies of major crop failures caused by disease would have been helpful.

This book is not without merit. It brings to light a great deal of interesting information and heads largely in the right direction. I have to think that it could have been greatly improved if Whitby had spent a bit less time in the archives, and had left his office at the University of Bradford to spend a few hours talking to farmers in the Vale of York.

This is an excellent historical review of anticrop BW efforts. The author starts with Iraq and UNSCOM, then quickly moves into describing the history of modern anticrop warfare from pre-WWII to the end of the US's BW program.

It covers the early efforts by France and Germany, then US and British efforts. Also described are US weapon systems, and target analysis.

This is a must have book in regards to studing anticrop BW, and understanding its history.

I'm glad I found this book !!! Unlike many other books of similar titles, this is one that I can really understand. Not too heavy dosage of biological terms. Provides good linkage between the biological science and engineering applications. Good for students who had chemical engineering backgrounds and wanted to venture into bioseparaions. The addional chapter on plant design and economics is also very beneficial.

While I resent the term remedial, I will admit that I am very weak in math. I had to use this text for an algebra semester and will have to use it again for a trigonometry semester. I did get a B+ in the class, but I think that had more to do with the teacher then the book. After I actually sat down, ignored that the teacher had said and read the text, the algebra portion became much clearer. You'll probably never buy this book to own it, but if you come across it in school, don't be afraid.

A wonderful history of lumbering and tree fellers in the 1800's. Particularly interesting account of a man named Joe Fournier who author claims; (and presents a valid case) was the lumberjack who set the poems and stories in motion that ended in the now legend of Paul Bunyan.

Muurahaisista on joskus riesaa, mutta tämä on jo liioittelua, tosin hauskaa sellaista - huikeaa eurooppalaisen tieteissarjakuvan ilotulitusta...

I've bought numerous books on Flash and the Dynamic Scripting that can be intermingled with Flash.... Flash 5 ActionScript F/X and Design, Flash 4 Creative Web Animation, and different Wrox books on ASP, ASP databases, and ADO. This book ties ALL of them together. It explains motion scripting for beginners, and then it shows how to import variables from ASP, PHP, Perl, and Cold Fusion. These 1000+ pages contain EVERYTHING you want to know about Flash, it it with out a doubt, THE BEST FLASH BOOK EVER CREATED!!!! It even branches out Flash to other programs like Dreamweaver UltraDev and Generator, it explains how to display information from databases using Flash Turbine. If you read this book, you will be a master at Flash.

An excellent book! Well worth the investment! It transitions well from more basic concepts to more complex topics -- With lots of substance for people at all levels of experience. Even those with more expertise can learn a thing or two from the different conceptual approaches presented. The book is not just about "here's how to do the same old boring X, Y & Z, just in the updated version of Flash", it also says "here's some different ways of thinking about solutions that takes greater advantage of new features of Flash". I also really enjoyed the mini math and geometry lessons... it's good to know that years of high school algebra and geometry could be put to some use!

The interface design chapters were particularly outstanding; judging by how awful so many Flash sites are at integrating interactivity, PLEASE!! I BEG YOU!!! everybody read the chapters on designing interfaces! They are a "must read" for anyone who wants to improve their site's interactivity.

The game design chapters are also incredibly helpful as well, and I think are some of the first useful explanations of game design I've ever seen for Flash. Even if you're not designing games in Flash, using a familiar game like Asteroids as a vehicle for explaining some pretty clever design elements works very well. Not to mention, it's very cool to be able to make your own video games! Flash isn't just for dull corporate websites anymore!

I'll be incorporating the lessons learned from those chapters into all the stuff I do... even though I only get to do very boring stuff for a corporate site. And if I use what this book teaches, maybe someday I can get hired to make games and do cool interfaces!!! :)

If you are a newbie,......their are other alternatives that will get your feet wet, but if you are a practicing Flash developer and have a firm understanding of ActionScript...this book will inspire you to build real dynamic Flash apps. It touches on Flash Javascript methods, Flash and textfiles and goes into server side middleware solutions like, CGI,Perl and PHP. It also introduces you to database integration. This book gives you real world solutions, which maybe a bit elementary, but overall it lays the foundation for you. I found this book to be inspiring and to be the book which pushed me to learn CGI,PERL,PHP and MySQL. If your looking to build real dynamic/interactive Flash applications or websites this is the book.

Teensy-weentsy photographs (of which there are few) and tiny drawings do not an identification tool make. Often, the verbal descriptions given for a butterfly do not match, nay, directly contradict the photograph or drawing included! The practice of providing a textual description on one page, a range map (if there even is one) on another, and yet a third page for the descriptive drawing make this a page-turning nightmare.

In short, take this book from your public library - don't waste your money on a very poorly done work.

As an amateur watcher just wanting to know which butterflies were in my garden, I was somewhat disappointed. I spent a great deal of time trying to compare the butterfly with the poorly represented plates. The few pictures scattered through the book were better, but I found errors in the identification given for the picture and the identification given in the plate and one was even not listed on the page they gave (or no where I have yet to find). The range listed were difficult for me to know if this species was in my backyard and not every species had a range map. These errors I found in one whole afternoon while trying to identify only THREE butterflies in my garden. Some of the book I like, like some of the intro information, but I guess other books have this info also. I was frustrated.

I got this from my son who needed a field guide to take to the park and forests. He loves it and so do I. Before we had borrowed our local libraries' 1950 edition of butterfly field guild. What an improvement! Unlike some people we just love it. The pictures are easy to use in the open where you can just notice a few things before whats being observed takes off flying. Opler is very good at listing the most obvious ID factors for each species. And it fits great in a back pack!

If you are expecting to learn anything new about German secret weapons then forget this book. Everything in it has been covered before countless times in other books dating back 40 years. Anyone with a moderate knowledge of the subject could have written this over a slow afternoon. Save your money and put it towards any of the other similar boos available at Amazon.com.

I was hoping for some interesting analysis and insight into the German weapons program, but alas, what I got instead was a fairly superficial chronology delivered in a just-the-facts-ma'am style. This book is pretty dry and unengaging as a result. There is so much more that could have been said about the legacy that German technology left to the world, particularly to the scientific and military communities. The potential of these WWII technologies often wasn't fully realized until years later. High-performance jet aircraft, the Soviet and American space programs and precision machining were all benefactors of the German research and development that took place during WWII. It would have been nice to get a deeper perspective on this aspect of the weapons effort, but this book doesn't deliver it. Too bad. If it weren't for the pictures, I'd have rated this book even lower.

Complete treatment of the many german secret weapons.Not so deep description, but I believe complete, including canons, rockets,air and earth based projects. Outstanding illustration.