Excellent photos giving a comprehensive picture of modern and untraditional hotel design.

It was a good experience of hotels and resort hotels in world by photos. I recommend to students who have interesting on architecture/interior design/graphic design/landscape architecture.

It's tight, but it's right. My comment stands. The stories in this book, bored me to sleep; alone!.

I have read all of the Wicked Words anthologies, and this is by far the best. Editor Kerri Sharp really knows what she's doing! My favorite in this saucy collection is a story called "Playing with Fire" by author Kimberly Dean. It's a really kinky story with a very unexpected twist at the end. The other to-die-for story is by Alison Tyler. Called "The Last Deduction," it's about an IRS auditor who gets what he deserves in the most juicy and extreme woman-on-top scenario. The final story, "Erotica?" by Leah Baroque is just plan hot. Dirty and raunchy for anyone's taste. Buy it. You'll love it!

On the upside, the book is a comprehensive collection of many doctors works on nutrition (as according to FDA and "old school" knowledge). It does explain very well many concepts with great details as expected in any college type text book.

On the downside, the editor Victor Herbert sounds like a very angry skeptic that looks down upon anyone that contributes to the field of nutrition that does not have a "M.D., F.A.C.P" after their name. According to him, even PH.D's are "quacks" (a term by the way which he grossly overuses throughout the book).

I was looking for a unbiased, non-fad, non-hype book on nutrition and what I found was a complete one-sided story that could have been written by Olvier Stone - trying to expose all nutrition's misinformation like...

- Don't beleive any advice about nutrition unless it comes from an M.D. - Organic foods and Health stores are a scam - Vitamin supplements are completely worthless and do nothing - Processed foods are just as good as natural foods

.. the list goes on. Herbert makes claims that he does not back up, with the exception of a few references to his own books that he wrote. This is like a hacker using several computers to hide where they are really coming from.

If you are one that has enough common sense to block out the biased opinion and learn from the facts, then this book is useful. However I am sure there are better choices out there for some good facts.

As a student earning my master's degree in public health, I have taken a special interest in nutrition books that are on the market. It often frightens me when I read the things that are getting published. This is an excellent book that provides the basics that one might need to improve health. I only gave it four stars because I felt it lacked some specifics that a person might look for. For instance, how much one should exercise to lose or maintain weight. If you want specifics you may have to supplement with another book.

I completely disagree with the review of October 25, 1998. Total Nutrition is a serious medical text about nutrition that supports its claims with scientific studies. I have a serious medical condition (a kidney transplant), and have had to learn a considerable amount about nutrition in order to keep my transplant healthy. I have over 60 books on nutrition, and this is the ONLY text that I reccommend to fellow transplant patients to understand nutrition.

The book is in three parts: Part I: Nutrition is explained in detail so that the reader understands what a macronutrient (fat, protein and carbohydrates) and micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) is. Part II: Nutrition and its importance to aging and gender is explained, everything from infants to geriatrics. Part III: Nutrition as it relates to chronic and acute illnesses is explained. Every manner of illness is covered (I learned the most from the section on kidney ailments).

I highly reccommend this book. If you have very little or no understanding of nutrition, Understanding Nutrition (by Ziff Davis press) is a very good introduction to nutrition and explains it in very easy terms. I read that book first and nutrition became very easy to comprehend. Stay healty!!

I have been in software development for the past 20 years, from IBM mainframe to client/server environments. I needed to "get in" on the new technology. I created the development environment I thought was needed to make the most of this book. It carried me, step-by-step, through development methodology in client/server development. However, the web applicaton development portion of the book is sorely lacking in usable information. I found the guidance somewhat lacking in understandable instruction concerning development for web applications. The downloaded program listing doesn't compile correctly, because of a lack of a class. The class is developed in the book, but there are no instructions on how to incorporate the class. Also, SQL Server is used as a database, but no reference is made to it as necessary to create and run the listings in the book.

I have most of the better selling C# books on the market. That gives me a unique perspective. Among all of the books dealing with ADO.NET / C# data access, this one stands alone in showing the reader how to construct a Domain Object Model to hold data, and moreover how to use some of NET's more advances features like Reflection and Attributes to assist in the creation of this code. To me, the chapter outlining this process was worth the price of the book alone. Like I said, it is absolutely unique. Most writers, perhaps because of a lack of in-depth understanding, just rehash the ADO.NET Dataset concept. But you can do so much more with NET that anyone concerned with building a proper DAL would do themselves a dissservice if they skipped over "C# and the NET Framework".

This book is a good introduction to c# and .net. Unlike some c# books totally devoted to sytax, which is not a problem for c++/java programers, this one covers a lot of areas in .net applications using c#, such as windows form, web form and web service. But the book does not provide a deep insignt into .net. As some viewer said, "basic introduction...but enough to give the reader a taste".

The topic, "The C++ Perspective", in my opinion, doesn't make much sense. There are some minor errors in the book, but to correct them is not a problem.

To sum up, if you want to know a little more than tutorials, try this one; if you want to dig into .net framework, maybe Jeffrey's Applied MS .NET Framework Programming or some il books.

I praised this book on a Mircosoft newsgroup... But the more I read this the less I like it. I wanted to share some thoughts here. After comparing this book to a few others on C#, I feel this has one a more comprehensive table of contents. You get a full 9 pages on XML commenting while others give a paragraph or two. There are some cool chapters such as "Building Mobile Applications", "Working with COM", "Working with COM+ Services" and ".NET Remoting". These are topics that my 1600 page VB.NET book (Francesco Balena, Microsoft Press) didn't cover.

However, there are a lot of typos, a lot of fluff, explanations are sometimes very poor, and organization is pretty bad.

It hasn't been very thoroughly proofread. Take this for example: "Abstract classes are also, by definition, virtual methods..." Still not sure how a class can be a method. There are a lot more like this, but re-reading the paragraph you can generally figure out what they're talking about.

By fluff, I mean that they do things like give an example of operator overloading for each and every unary operators (come on, do I need an example for unary plus AND unary minus?) Or how to cause about 6 different exceptions (OutOfMemory, StackOverflow, NullReference, etc) and how to catch each one. It's a good way to pad the page count, that's about all.

The overall organization of the book doesn't make it a very good read, either. It really skips around a lot. For example, talking about overloading members and virtual members BEFORE talking about classes seems like a poor choice to me if you're really aiming to help novice programmer.

It claims to be written for novice and experienced developer alike, but I'm not sure it makes a great first book on .NET. Although, if you are a veteran programmer, you'll fly through the first 11 chapters since they are written more so for the novice.

If you already know VB.NET and want to transition to C# (like I'm doing) then this book will get you up and running with all of the important things. However, the WROX books have gotten some good reviews on newsgroups, so I might give those a try instead.

This books is poorly written. It tries to be a book for beginners, which is fine with me, but it then mentions complex topics in passing without elaboration. For instance, it talks briefly about structures. It assumes I know what/how/when to use structures vs. classes (until much, much later in the book). What's the difference between a structure and a class? It just assumes that I know. That may not be the best example, but it's one of MANY examples.

Another qualm I have with this book is it is too much "what" with very little "why". It pays very little attention to best practices. For example, it will tell you how to implement an interface, but what are the best ways to implement an interface. Granted this gets into more esoteric OO design concepts, but still, give me some ideas on HOW to do stuff, not just WHAT I can do. Most other programming books have more of this HOW kind of discussion.

Finally, there are the annoying typos. It clearly shows that this book was just thrown together. The quality just isn't there.

I can't recommend a specific alternative, but go with something that has better reviews.

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OK - I'm revising my review as of 5/21/03. The above review still holds, BUT I have now read 2 other C# books, and to my utter astonishment, they are worse. So - this is the best book I have found yet, though it has some serious issues, as I mention above.

I'm new to C# and this is my first book on it, I've had some experience over the past several years in C/C++ but am new to C# and .net in general. This book is a good read, and the first several chapters give you a clear understanding of how to do tasks in C#. It doesn't spend a lot of time going over the basics that you should probably already have learned from other languages (controls, variables, etc.) but has gotten me up and running with C# in no time flat. I wouldn't say it's 100% comprehensive and I have purchased other book to accompany this one as I finish reading it, but it is definitely a good read for someone who has some knowledge of other C languages (some background in C++ OOP is definitely helpful, the author starts in talking about object oriented structures from the beginning and assumes that you know what he is talking about) will do fine with this book.

This book I though would give me inside out of the C#. However, half of the book is filled with excerpts of the full source code that is available on the CD. I tried an example code in Chapter 5 that creates a TCPClient, it did not work. The website [website] where the member area is located, doesn't contain any usefull links rather update your profile. While registering, the website gave a SQL Server ODBC error that it could not save the record. However strangely I received confirmation e-mail even after the ODBC error occured. Overall, I am not satisfied with this book. Its just waste of money.

This text is meant as a general overview of the .net framework but it also delves into source code to provide more detailed examples. Unfortunately, this only serves to confuse the reader as many of the examples are not cohesive or clearly explained. There is little benefit in smearing examples over half the textbook if you are not going to take the time to explain them properly. It seems as this was a rush to market product where the examples only serve to make the book thicker. The authors should have made up their minds initially if the text was meant to be an overview or a detailed "how-to" book.

For topics that I am not familiar with I feel that a lot of details are missing. As such I read the new topic's chapter up to 4 times to ultimately feel that I need another source. As such I consider this book to be a good reference book.

On a more positive note the examples that the book gives are abundant and could serve as a starting point for your own development.

This book is poorly organized and lacks focus. The topics' coverage is shallow. Even with the lightweight content, it should be titled or described as "How to Transition COM+ programming with VB to C#".

I honestly don't like writing bad reviews but I feel compelled to save people money when I can. Unless you are looking for a manager's overview of COM+ programming don't buy this book. Coverage of COM+ itself is very light. The author appears to assume that the reader has picked that up someplace else... probably by writing COM+ components in VB 6. There are no in-depth discussions of the technology or even best practices. The jist of this book is that now you use attributes to COM+ enable your code written in C#. The coverage of what attributes are available to you and within those attributes what options are supported and what they mean is likewise incomplete and lacking in depth. However, where I really lost respect for this book was when I looked in the registry to see what was going on from a COM perspective for the classes that I had built based on the code fragments in the text. What a mess. Stale registry entries for previous builds of my components were everywhere. It took me an hour to get the mess cleaned up and several more to piece together what was going on and realize that there are a lot of COM specific attributes never mentioned in this book that you need to known about in order to build a COM+ component _correctly_ using C#. And as I have discovered that is the crux of the situation. To do COM+ using C# you need to be _very_ familiar with COM-CLR interop. Basically you need _much_ more information than this book provides.

In summary I believe that reading this book will serve only to make one 'dangerous' not proficient in COM+ development using C#.

The path from COM+ components to the equivalent services in .NET is often misunderstood, yet vital to building a large transactional system using Microsoft's flagship development platform. This book does an excellent job of taking the reader through the .NET serviced component support with reference to the existing COM+ Services. From an introductory chapter covering the .NET architecture, the author takes a journey through transactions, role-based security, events, object pooling and queued components. The book is both concise and readable with well-worked examples: not one of those weighty tomes that fill your shelf with a rehash of existing documentation! My biggest criticism is the lack of depth in the chapter on transactions, which lets the book down slightly; a longer discussion in place of the appendix introducing C# would have been appreciated. Nevertheless, this book is well worth the money.

The writing of this book is too verbose. Some sentences contain more than 5 commas and I thought I was getting lost. It's very difficult to know what the author is trying to explain with those extremly long sentences.
Many examples are not adequate at all. Some of the logics in the examples are so bad, I couldn't see why the author added these to the book. They rather confuse you than helps you understanding the concepts behind C#.

I am sorry but it does look like a rough draft rather than a finished book.

Like many Wrox books of late, this book is a mixed bag. There are some really excellent or unusual chapters that make the book (almost) worth its high cost and then there are many chapters that are poorly written, poorly edited or both. (I liked the chapters on remoting and security a lot.) The book also has a disconcerting habit of not finishing what it starts (like how to print).

While there is no perfect C# book out there yet, there are better books than this one. My recommendations are:

If you a beginner definitely buy Archer's book "Inside C#"

If you have a C++ or Java background buy Gunnerson's "A Programmer's Introduction To C#" (be sure to get the second edition) or Liberty's "Programming C#".

If you want a comprehensive book and can afford only one by Troelsen's "C# and the .NET Platform", if you can afford two buy this book and Troelsen.

It's one of the best C# and .NET Framework introductions, but the problem is that, due to the extent of the subject, all the books that try to cover the whole .NET Framework in a single (even if big) volume are missing the point from a professional programmer point of view.
To have all you need to fully understand the .NET Framework it's absolutely essential to have a collection of books that cover every single topic in detail and they are appearing now.
If you want to save money and buy a good introduction especially about C# or you are an experienced programmer that ventures out to .NET and C# for the first time then it could be a good purchase, otherwise it's better to focus on the topics you are looking for and buy more specialized publications. A professional programmer could find it a little superficial in some parts and due to the usual hurry of Wrox Press to be first on target a little disjointed in others.

A very light overview of the C# language with correspondingly light examples. This book has enough depth to give you a 'feel' for the language but it's too shallow to teach C# programming. For example only two (small) pages are devoted to constructors and destructors, another two and half to events and delegates, etc. Generally I found the discussions so light that they generated more questions than they answered. Buy this book only if you want to get a taste of the C# language, you don't have a lot of time, and/or no alternative books are available. This is definitely the kind of book that you read once and then never open again.

A well done "do you have an evening" book that provides a quick review of the feature set available in C#. The examples are concise and conceptual, so if you're comfortable with C++ or Java then this book will expand your brain just fine; if all you know is VB then you may want to wait for something more comprehensive. The Java influence is blatant, to the extent that I think there should have been a chapter devoted to a compare and contrast against the Java language and programming model. If you're into Microsoft programming stuff buy this book.

Now, if I could just get my hands on the C# compiler...

This book is a great introduction to the C# Reference available on MSDN. This book is for experienced developers who want a jump-start on the new language and most certainly NOT for new programmers who are not familiar with C, C++, or Java... Also, an understanding of COM+ will certainly help you appreciate chapter 10.

A MUST read for ANY Java developer who is willing to sacrifice a few hours of reading time, in exchange for a programming language with the speed, power, scalability, and compatibility that Sun has shielded us from. (Not all developers are idiots. We CAN handle power) I originally thought that "Presenting C#" did a lame job of introducing the "unsafe" conditionals in C#, which allow access to raw memory and pointer conventions, but I soon realized that this was done for a reason. If you want to use pointers in C# and the NGWS-COM interoperability will not do, a programmer that is capable of using pointers "safely" will know where to look...

The ability to create cross platform applications, in ANY programming language is something the IT industry has been longing for...And although Microsoft's J++ language doesn't suffer any of Java's short-comings due to "delegates", its clear to me that C# will be J++'s replacement and the preferred language for the NGWS system.

While the author seems to cover the topics well, including good useable code examples, much of the information is already obsolete. He obviously wrote this while the C# language was still in Beta 1, because many of the classes and methods he uses were removed, replaced, or renamed as of Beta 2. I can't believe they published a book written about a language before the language was officially finalized and released. It's very difficult to search the Internet, MSDN, etc. for all of the "equivalent" classes for the outdated ones the author uses... I recommend you find a newer and more accurate book.

An earlier reviewer said he had trouble with delegates. I agree, he explains complicated things on a high level, then the simpler things that should already be known by programmers, he grinds into you. I went to a web-site and learned what I needed to about Delegates in one paragraph. Matt forgets to tell us (no pun intended) what delegates are... This is a decent reference, but as for learning the language, I would look to something else.

WHERE I'M COMING FROM: Computer science grad student with academic experience in C++. 2 years professional ColdFusion and SQL. 1 year professional Java and PHP.

WHAT I HAVE TO SAY: Eh. This book definitely doesn't talk down to developers with a medium level of experience, but it doesn't really spend all that much time on any one topic. Maybe I'm dense, but I still haven't caught on to its explanation of Delegates. This might be better for an Advanced Beginner than an Intermediate Programmer. This being my first C# book, I'm guessing it is middle of the road. I'm moving on to Petzold's Programming Windows with C#.