I was glad to learn about the Knights of Templer and that they were crusaders. I always wondered how Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon knew that and it is because of this classic.
I was surprised that it talked so much about Robin of Lockesley. The story of Ivanhoe seemed to be the same only told by Ivanhoe's friends and not Robin's.
I thought that the DeBracyn and the Knight of Templer Brian de Bois Guilbert were pretty evil guys which made the story interesting. They were weasels when they had their backs to the wall but did preform with honor when required like when Richard gets DeBracy.
I guess I did not understand the prejudice of the time because they treated the Jews like dirt and they were so sterotypical. I really thought that the Jewish girl Rebecca was going to end up with Ivanhoe instead of that Saxon Lady Roweana. I guess you have to appreciate the times that they lived in.
It was a different look the Richard/Prince John history.
Book itself was simple to read, well at least for me. There are lot of examples, but I found them inconsistent. You may want to try IBM's website to get more information on OVID if you don't want to buy the book.
"This book is of critical importance in our endeavors to leverage different world views in order to successfully develop software in combination with users, user interface designers, and programmers. I plan to incorporate this approach in my own work and hope you will see the worth of this in your work also."
Dr. Brad Cox, Author of Object-Oriented Programming: an Evolutionary Approach, George Mason University
"The effective translation of an understanding of the user into highly usable product design is one of the most significant challenges in the information technology industry. OVID directly addresses this challenge by defining a new, comprehensive approach that is based on solid, object-oriented methods."
Karel Vredenburg, Corporate Team Lead for User-Centered Design, IBM
"This is a very good book for introducing programmers to object-oriented GUI style, especially for applying programmers' object notations to OO GUI style. This is one of the rare sources on the critical topic of how to represent object "views" in those notations."
Tom Dayton, Senior Usability Engineer, Sun Microsystems Usability Labs & Services
"There has long been a need for a method which integrates Object Oriented Design of applications and their GUIs. This is it."
Paul Brebner, Software Research Engineer, CSIRO Land and Water, Australia
"Object-oriented interface design is an excellent way to bridge the gap between task data and fully realized systems. Object, view and interaction design (OVID) methodology provides indispensable guidance on bridging that gap successfully."
Christopher R. Hale, Senior Human Factors Engineer, Intel Corporation
User interface design has long been a mysterious area for many software developers. OVID blends the art and science of user-centered interface design and usability with the familiar and structured methodologies of Object-Oriented Design. I will use this book in my consulting work, seminars, and courses--and know its practical approach will be very well-received.
Theo Mandel, Ph.D., Interface Design/Usability Consultant, Interface Design and Development, Author of "The Elements of User Interface Design" and "The GUI-OOUI War"
"At the beginning of this decade, Don Norman characterized usability as 'the next competitive frontier.' Here at the end of the decade, OVID arms user interface designers for that competition, offering a series of proven design methods presented in a cogent framework, with the user kept at the center."
Randolph G. Bias, Manager, Usability Engineering, BMC Software, Inc., co-editor of "Cost-Justifying Usability".
List price: $19.95 (that's 30% off!)
Starting with a chapter on Y2K (which we know on 20-20 hindsight never became the calamity that some were predicting), there are ideas in this book for everything from a complete world-wide computer shutdown, to "Mad Max" type worlds, and even the biblical "Judgement Day", along with several others. There's also a section on a super-hero world suffering from post-apocalypse blues.
The "sidebars" (sections of the book along the sides of each page) contain even more material that can be used to put your game world in a state of chaos. Some of these sidebars beg to be put into whole worlds of their own.
But the book suffers slightly when it reads a little like a collection of articles about post-apocalypse scenarios in gaming, rather than a single world presented in RPG terms. The =nine= authors each contributed a section or two to this book, and only the excellent effort by Sean Punch to put it all together under one roof keeps this book from being merely a collection of unrelated after Armageddon articles.
I'd still recommend this book for people wanting to see what their campaign world would look like after a major catastrophe, or for people wanting to explore what happens after.
There was one point I did not like about the book though. It would make many references to other GURPS source books, some of which were out of print, for more material on a subject. I feel that some of the writing was judt put in a advertisements and "plug" for other books.
Personally, I wish they had touched more on the "Mad Max," "Postman," and "Fallout" (a post-apacalyptic computer game) scenarios, but I do realize that the book was created for post Y2K campaigns and that everyone does not like what I like.
Overall, though, the book provides good post distaster material.
List price: $19.95 (that's 30% off!)
Anyone interested in the Arctic exploration and early Native Americans will enjoy this book. The author, Sir John Franklin, was a fearless explorer who died on a subsequent Arctic mission. He descibes his meetings with the traders and local inhabitants in great detail. He relied in large part on local Native Americans as guides and hunters. It was his intention to meet with the Eskimo people, who avoided all contact with his group. The Native Americans refused to accompany the group all the way north due to their fear of the Eskimos. I highly recommend this book.