I approached The Hollow Man with the knowledge that it would be a less than glowing review of the life of Bing Crosby. In that respect, I got what I expected. What I didn't expect however, and what drove me to distraction, was the constant substantiating by the authors of every statement that they made that they felt might suffer some criticism. I became annoyed with the lengthy explanations of the logic they used to come to their conclusions. And the way they used quotes from obscure players to back up their assertions reminded me of the tabloids. Another major drawback is that while they review Bing's early performing days quite extensively, they then skip through huge chunks of his life with hardly a mention. A thoroughly dissatisfying read.

When BING CROSBY became a superstar in the early thirties with records and movies,it was the JAZZ age.BING made a lot of money,alienated a few friends on his way to stardom,married DIXIE LEE,had many affairs with other women on the cover,and then after winning a battle with the bottle continued to neglect his wife who became an alcoolic and died from cancer in the early fifties.Many aspects of this biography will disappoint the CROSBY fans who thought he was a saint.The authors i think tried simply to tell the truth about the man and his complexity.You'll learn many things about him if you read that book,not only the negative side of course.

I found this book to be a very sincere and well researched look at one of the world's most famous crooner's. Crosby's well documented selfishness and mistreatment of his own sons and first wife was documented by Dixie (Crosby's first wife, who died of cancer), all 4 of his sons by Dixie. Only one son remains living, and the other 3 all committed suicide by gunshot. Crosby was an ill tempered and mean drunkard, which was substantiated not only by the authors, but by co-workers and studio heads. The authors seemed to have gone to great lengths to establish facts of Crosby's early years with his beginnings with the Rhythmn Boys Trio back in the late 1920's. Crosby's early years near Spokane, Washington, where he grew up are very well documented. I found this to be a very insightful read. The authors intentions to me did not seem to be that of trying to be vindictive or hateful, just factual.Authors show that just because Bing was an alchoholic, didn't mean he wasn't likeable.An enjoyeable read!

This book's title is misleading, as it appears to feed off the familiarity with the Applied Programming series of books from Microsoft Press. It is truly a mixed-bag, as the above editorial review admits. After expounding on the 'revolutionary' idea that software should be people oriented, it dives into pages of code that lays out an Asp.Net application. It then sandwiches in a C# fundamentals tour, and then dives right into more code. If there is a purpose to this book, I couldn't distill it. It truly appears as if each author wrote their portion of their book without talking to the other, and then the editor mashed them together the night before the deadline hit.

If you have kept up with the .NET revolution, you have no doubt seen and read a lot of books on .NET and the .NET languages. Most of the books on C# deal with the basics of syntax with a couple of small samples applications. Very few, however, deal with any sort of real world situations.
While this book does cover a few of the basics, it is more focused on the people aspect. I feel this is an important, often overlooked, aspect of software development and the fact that it is overlooked is why so much software is hard to use.
If you are looking for a best practices book, this tome is not quite there. The same goes for a book strong on code. While you can use the CD to look at a good amount of sample code, the book is rather thin. This is not, however, the focus of the book; and, since so many other books cover this, the niche filled here is rather nice.
If I had to pick the proper audience for this book, there would be two categories: 1) Anyone who has ever had a piece of software fail as the end-users never bought in, and 2) anyone who wants to ensure this never happens. While it is not an excellent book, I have to laud the publisher for taking a chance on this subject matter selling. I hope it does.

The Life and Times Of John Wayne by David Hanna is a pretty good book. I liked this book because it listed all of the movies and shows John Wayne has ever appeared in. I also liked this book because it did a time line of his life and showed all of the obstacles he had to overcome.
I would recommend this book to people who enjoy western shows and movies. I also think farmers,ranchers and cow tenders would enjoy this book.
The book has a section listing quotes,and one of my favorites is,"I'm 53 years old and 6'4,I've had three wives,five children and three grandchildren.I love good whisky.I still don't understand women, and i don't think there is any man who does."