I think the book is great, but if you are a beginner there are only a couple easy puzzles. The same is true if you are advanced. Only the intermediete players can get the most out of the book. I would like to see a book for different levels.

this is overall a pretty good book. I think that there are better books out there.

Some good points made (more students taking theSAT,forexample), but most of the book is a crock. He fails toconsider many of the facts, such as our comparison with otherindustrialized nations, 1/5 of adults have rudimentary literacy skillsafter 12 or more years of schooling (and it isn't looking any betterthanks to education college professors), the SAT scores wererecentered in 1994, more students are taking remedial college courses,more students are taking college prep courses in high school, but theyaren't anymore prepared, etc, etc. He blames the tests for notshowing progress, rather than the source...PHILOSOPHY! Does theauthor watch Jay Leno?

In very smooth and readable prose, free of "paradigm-speak," Rothstein examines the much touted crisis of decaying intellects of American public school students.

Since most chicken littles of the academic crisis cite declining SAT scores, Rothstein begins with an examination of exactly what the SAT is supposed to measure, and more importantly, who takes the SAT. Since SAT scores reflect the achievement of a self-selected group, because the SAT is not required, these scores aren't of much use in demonstrating the abilities of an entire senior class (not to mention the fact that juniors and seniors take it together, along with some sophomores as well). I learned the surprising fact that until 1994, yearly scores were still compared (with some adjustment, but nonetheless....) to a group of young men who had all gone to private schools, and who took the test in 1941.

Rothstein includes information about declining dropout rates since the 1930's, and how this effects achievement scores of a senior class; he looks at more legitimate means of comparing students, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. He also looks at the correlation between income and SAT scores, and documents the fact that more students from lower income families have been taking the test in recent decades.

In the last chapters, Rothstein examines some of the other issues facing schools, such as bi-lingual education, and phonics vs. whole word methods of reading instruction.

Anyone in education, and anyone concerned about national student achievement should read this book.

In 114 pages of very readable writing, the author sheds light on what test scores mean, and don't mean, from past and present. The difficulty of comparing SAT scores from the 1940's, to the scores in recent years, is more than just difficult. It's impossible, and for a number of reasons that he explains well -- only one of which is that the test is voluntary. Really, what he writes is fascinating. For example, SAT scores are used to judge the teaching effectiveness of different states. Iowa and North Dakota score very high. But in Iowa, for example, only the top 3% of their students take that test! In NJ, on the other hand, 74% of the students recently took the test. Would you not expect the results to be different -- lower -- if 74% of the kids take the test rather than the top 3%? Sure.

The problem is that it's exactly those tests -- and others -- which are used to tell us how we've gotten worse in our school systems.

In 1941 -- the first year of the SAT -- approximately 1% of all high school students took the SAT. Accurate demographic data don't exist, but the test was taken, for the most part, by the kids from wealthy families.

Today, the percentage of kids taking the test is much greater. And thus the demographics are vastly different. Yet we draw mistaken conclusions from test results then, and now, that are simply statistically impossible to make.

Very interesting book. Gives a much-needed historical perspective.

The author's conclusion -- that schools are actually doing a better job today than in years past -- is quite well-supported.

Final note: the average IQ in our country went up 15 points -- a huge gain -- from 1932 to 1978. (No analysis done since then that the author noted.) Is this the sign of a system in disarray? Doesn't seem so.

The author is quick to point out that his analysis isn't meant to say that no improvements can, or need be, made in our schools. But perhaps we're seeing "crisis" about the wrong things. And putting money into the wrong things.

He encourages us to make objective analysis, and to understand what we can conclude -- and what we cannot.

Excellent. Read it.

The only reviewer is the publisher, how objective is that

This book is a well-researched, well-written guide to the all-important process of disaster recovery plan testing. It's an area many people omit from their plan development process because it takes time to plan and execute a good exercise. Mr. Rothstein's book greatly simplifies the process, taking the fear out of testing. Recommended for all serious business continuity professionals!

If you do not know how to plan for a DR, and you want to have your documentation in place. This is a book you can count on. It might even help you for your certification if you plan for SUN DR.

You should also read another of his book "a guide to bcp". that will help to complete a whole picture.

The subject matter of this book should be a well known fact - that music and mathematics have much in common. The author's expertise in both subjects is presumably well developed and his experience as music critic of the New York Times should have endowed him with eloquence and clarity. Sadly, none of this comes through to me. The book is very heavy reading with many tortuous sentences and themes which wander all over the place. The approach taken to identifying the similarities between music and mathematics actually cause me to ask myself: "yes, but many of these characteristics could equally be applied to engineering, art, language, poetry - even crowd dynamics!" It is hard to see from his development of the subject why these factors apply exclusively to music and mathematics. Thus the esoteric similarity between musical notation and mathematical symbols is not exclusive to those disciplines. I think the author missed a wonderful opportunity to expand on a fascinating subject with insight and clarity.

I found I was unable to finish reading the book. The writing style and theme development was too daunting.

These reviews cast a poor light on this book. Although I read it some time ago (1999), the book seemed to be interesting because it tracked the development of mathematical thought and musical thought over several centuries. It might be poorly written, but what can one expect from a mathematician? Even if the links between math and music are not clearly developed, I found both topics interesting. This interest may be related to my ignorance of pure math and musical theory; nonetheless, it provides people like me with a port of entry into two topics that could easily be treated with too much complexity. Maybe this book is just a collection of very interesting and unrelated topics.

I have read Rothstein's book several times since it was printed, and I have also used it as a text in several Honors College courses devoted to the the relationship between music and mathematics. One way of defining music is that it's a five letter word in the English language for a lot of different things that people do with patterns of sound and silence. And one way of defining mathematics is that it's an eleven letter word in the English language for a lot of different things that people do with pattern. By exploring the ways in which music and mathematics handle pattern, one is naturally pointed in other directions (weaving, art, science) that demonstrate how valuable it is to recognize and explore the inter-connectedness of apparently "different" fields. Rothstein's book is an elegant exploration of this kind of inter-connectedness. Although both musicians and mathematicians might find themselves alternately arguing with Rothstein about an issue in their own field, or befuddled because he is talking about something they do not understand, "Emblems of Mind" provides both with a thought-provoking and outstanding contribution to the literature on the topic. While other texts have tended to be so sophomoric as to be useless, Rothstein's book challenges the reader to explore more deeply a connection which seems so obvious yet amorphous when one looks at it more closely. It's unfortunate he doesn't write more about it.

This book was better than most produced by a think tank (in this case the Economic Policy Institute) but that isn't saying much. Unlike most "think" tank works, divergent views are allowed, and there is a decent discussion between Chubb and Moe and their critics. Overall, though, the book failed to impress me as a solid discussion of choice and its effects. A better, briefer (and more one-sided) book on the topic is Smith and Meier's The Case Against School Choice.

This book is good for second year medical students taking Step 1 of the USMLE. It's a concise and comprehensive text of what you'll need to know for Step 1. If you understand the material in this book, you will do alright on Step 1. The information could be better organized (and it's not fully comprehensive), but otherwise this book is well recommended.

I have a solid background in C/C++ and I was hoping to fill in some gaps in other areas with this book. Unfortunately, given the poor quaility of the C/C++ information (and the sometimes-silly stuff in the "how to interview" section), I really don't trust what's in the rest of the volume.

The C/C++ chapter is divided into "beginner", "intermediate", and "advanced" sections. Instead, they should be labeled "unbelievably trivial", "very trivial", and "trivial". Even worse, much of the information is presented in a misleading or incorrect fashion. I suppose this is to be expected, given that the main credentials of the person who wrote the C/C++ section are a music degree and the ability to play the string bass.

If I were giving an interview and I heard a candidate parroting the C/C++ answers in this book, I would promptly show him/her to the door.

Instead, get a copy of: "Programming Interviews Exposed" by Mongan and Suojanen.

This book suffers from poor editing,poor questions for VB, C++, Java and SQL. Many wrong and poor explanations and answers.

I have no idea about Mainframe, Cisco etc sections.

Only ASP section is worth reading with a comprehensive coverage of the topic.

I have never returned a book. This is the first one which I had to return.

I liked the concept of this book, presenting some typical questions that might be asked during a technical interview. But in the section that I read (Visual Basic 5.0), I found that many of the answers were totally incorrect. A study guide that gives out wrong info is worse than no study guide at all. To be fair, I only read through the VB5 chapter, and the other chapters may be more accurate. But if you're thinking about purchasing this book, be warned.