I have to admit, this book contains an impressive overview of all the Windows DNA technologies. As a reminder, DNA has been there for years and was working under NT4. It has been revamped with trumpets with a new name, .Net, with all those new services. The authors do have this in mind and they will tell you where .Net will be improving features.

I would recommend this book to anybody that wants to know what is Windows DNA/.Net (beside thinking it's everything that Microsoft is providing for developers!). Of course, you cannot have all those technologies into one book and expect the best coverage on all of them. Having that in mind, the authors create an incredible reference for developers that wants to upgrade to a more scalable & distributed environment as well as to take leverage of the new technologies that came with Windows 2000 (for developers that is).

The only thing that I have to mention (and I did to Wrox) was that I personnaly believe that this book, though the readers needs to have professional knowledge of development, would be better inside the Beginning series since this book serves as an overview reference of all those technologies. Wrox will undoubtfully then release multiple Professional books that will go further in those new technologies (such as doing COM+ events or asynchronous components, having XML Business Objects, etc.).

As a bottom line, most of the authors wrote in a confident programming style and it is a very interesting book to go through. ... But I can't wait for the .Net one!

This book comes in handy as a great reference for utilizing these technologies in the real world. If you're looking for a book that you can sit down and read cover to cover to understand the basics, this is not it. If you're an experienced developer who wants to dive into the guts of the technologies, then this is for you.

I recommend this book a chapter at a time (after reading the first 2 review chapters), in order to learn how to implement a technology (like MTS, MSMQ, etc) in the real world.

Windows DNA is an platform and methodology for Enterprise development. It is taking all of what Microsoft offers for industry : server software (SQL Server, Biztalk), development software (Visual Studio) and productivity software (Office, Viso) and making them tightly inter operatable to produce scaleable solutions that can be development very rapidly.

This book covers Microsoft DNA and does so very well. If you have been following the evolution of Microsoft's Enterprise development methodology and related technologies (MTS, COM, etc..) then you should flip though this one before buying to make sure it offers enough new information for your investment. Do this especially if you already have the Wrox title: Professional MTS/MSMQ and you have a good book on ASP or Visual Basic.

If however you are a beginner/intermediate level Visual Basic, ASP or VC++ developer and you want to expand you knowledge from how to build small-to mid-sized client-server or desktop applications to building scalable Enterprise solutions then this book is for you.

Even if you aren't a yachtsman this book is a must when visiting the Virgin Island particularly the British Virgins. There is information on the island's beaches, restaurants and other features that are very relevant. Its spiral bound for constant use and a handy size too. The publishers rely on a demand for reprinting this guide on a regualar basis. Unlike other travel books where advertisers have heavy influence on content, the Cruising Guide must rely on the quality of it's content to prosper. Gator

This book offers nothing in the way of original research or new conclusions about the integration of organized baseball; it is full of errors, special pleading, and misplaced nostalgia. It also fails to acknowlege its debt to the superior work of others, especially Jules Tygiel (*Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and his Legacy*) and John C. Chalberg (*Rickey and Robinson: The Preacher, the Player and America's Game*). Purchase either of the latter books (or both) and give this misconceived vanity effort a pass.

This little book--small in dimensions and hardly over 100 pages in length--should be on everyone's bookshelf. Whether you remember watching Jackie Robinson play (as I do), or whether he's just a name from the distant past; whether you're white (as I am), or black, or any other race, creed or color; whether you're a baseball fan (like me) or someone who couldn't care less about the National Pastime, Jackie Robinson's story is for everyone.

The only reason I didn't give this book a 5-star rating is that there's really nothing new in it; if you already know the saga of Robinson's integration of baseball you aren't likely to learn a lot of news things about it here. But Scott Simon writes beautifully and movingly and retells this great American story with verve and directness.

I've read that there are professional baseball players today (even black players!) who barely have any idea who Robinson was or what he endured. His story should never be forgotten and this wonderful book will help assure that Robinson's memory endures.

This book is a perfect two-hour read for a Saturday morning after listening to the author on NPR's Saturday Morning Edition. The reader can hear Mr. Simon's distinctive and familiar voice when reading the pages. The book is not intended to be a comprehensive history on baseball's integration or a biography of Jackie Robinson, as noted in the opening pages. Rather, it provides just the right amount of background on Mr. Robinson and Mr. Richey, as well as the context surrounding events. Mr. Simon's notes and examples stimulate readers to learn more about particular people and events. I particularly recommend this book (and possibly the series from the list of forthcoming books) as a quick read for adults and teenagers who desire to read about the people and events that shaped our nation, yet must balance the responsibilities of family, work and community, which may prevent them from reading longer books.

Talk about a tough (and HUGE) subject to cover! Well, I bought this book for two reasons (1) to get a better understanding of C#, and (2) to serve as a starting point for passing the C# for Windows exam. The book served both purposes very well. I read this text cover to cover with the exception of 4 out of 23 chapters.

I saw another review of this book that said something like "1300 page cursory overview" Well, you're probably right. But, I challenge anyone out there to find a book that covers every aspect of .NET that's less that 5,000 pages. Here are a few examples:

1.) There's a chapter on security (there are entire books on the subject)

2.) There's a chapter on ASP (there are entire books on the subject)

3.) There's a chapter on web services (there are entire books on the subject)

4.) There's a chapter on XML (there are entire books on the subject)

5.) There's two chapters on ADO .NET (there are entire books on the subject)

You get my point. This material adds up, and anyone expecting in-depth coverage of everything in 1300 pages should get a reality check. Unfortunately, to really get a grasp on .NET you're going to have to shell out for more books. (So far I have C# in general, web services, and ADO covered. The next purchase will be an ASP .NET book) Can you see where I'm going here? Professional C# is kind of an umbrella for all of the other books. Now, where I find this book does a nice job by itself (not requiring another text) is as follows:

1.) Nice job explaining the C# language itself (including some of the more advanced datatypes), as well as how it implements OO principles.

2.) Nice job explaining what and how the framework is constructed, as well as how a .NET application is constructed.

3.) Focuses mostly on the client-server (windows as opposed to web) side of development.

4.) ADO coverage is enough to get you productive.

There are a LOT of other good features of the book. And most of the subject areas covered provide an adequate presentation of the material. A couple of exceptions are ASP and security. I realize that a book on C# must at least touch on these topics, but it probably could have just left those chapters out. Buy another book. (35 pages on ASP .NET? Don't bother!)

I can't say if it's too advanced for some users. I've never purchased a "beginning" series book by Wrox, I alway go for the "professional". The only thing I would have expected them to do a better job on beacuse you can't really get a separate book on the subject, is deployment.

Anyhoo, I think this is a great book for the purpose for which it was intended. If it was 5,000 pages long, I would have given it 5 stars. For the most part, Wrox usually does a good job. Remember, there are NO silver bullets with .NET books. Unfortunately you're going to have to get at least 4 titles to cover everything well.

Bottom Line: If this is your first .NET book, it's worth it. It was my fourth, and it's still worth it. If you need to take it to the next level, you'll need more than one book - no matter which one you get first.

This is a big and heavy book (I just love this kind), and it covers more apects of C# than any other book on the market. No matter what you want to do with C#, you'll find something useful in this book.

I learned C# from the first edition of this book, and bought the second edition to use for reference. If you have some Visual Basic, C++ or Java background, this is the best book you can find to learn C# (you should also have the basic concepts of OOP programming, although there is an appendix that focuses solely on that subject). After you have learned C#, this is the best book to keep on your desk when you get into trouble and MSDN can't help too much.

If you're new to .NET, the first chapter ("C# and the .NET Arhictecture") will be really enlightening. Chapters 2,3,4 (C# Basics, Object-Oriented C# and Advanced C# topics) cover all you need to know about C# syntax and basics. The book also contains valuable material and plenty of code examples about Windows Forms, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, XML, File and Registry Operations, Working with Active Directory, Web Services and .NET remoting, COM Interoperability, COM+, GDI+ and so on. It doesn't try to cover exaustively each of those subjects, but it's enough to get you started.

Have fun with this big red book. This is definitely one of my favourite programming books, and the price is so low compared to the amount of quality information it has inside.

This book is packed with knowledge. Every page is worth its weight in gold. I read it from cover to cover. Re-doing EVERY exercise manually. Trust me, I know what I'm saying.

I worked with the 1st Edition. Took me 8 months to finish the book thorougly. Yes there is some mistakes and typos. But if you understand the text, you can correct these mistakes easily. As a reward, the exercises I redo is always better than the book's ones.

Some persons complaint that there's too much authors resulting in style discrepancy and the chapters slightly overlap their introduction. Yes it's true. And I found that it's rather a GREAT advantage. Just because each author gives you the best of their expertise. Do you think an author of ASP.NET could give you detailed explanation all the intricacies of the C# & .NET runtime environment?

The repetition of some concepts is not really a waste, this book is advanced. I found that it's rather good. Actually, I found this book doesn't have enough pages. Sometime I can't do better than 3 pages a day.

The chapters related to the .NET and C# language fundamental (Chapter 1 to 10) and advanced techniques (File IO, ASDI, COM+, GDI+, .NET Remoting, Windows Services and Security) are simply wonderful. They represent +80% of the book. I rated the ADO.NET and XML chapters 4 stars. The weakest part is ASP.NET, Web Services. I wish the author had choosen a simpler example and add may be few more chapters. The chapter on Custom Control is OK. In anyway, I can't blame the author, to get serious on ASP.NET, you'd rather buy a specific book.

I particularly like the side notes and the Appendix giving a background comparison C# and traditional languages (C++, Java, VB).

If you expect from this book a collection of recipes of code ready for cut and paste, then you will be likely disappointed. This book is for those who are willing to LEARN. The C# language and OOP concept itself is not that difficult. It's rather the .NET Framework itself and how to use wisely the wealth of its base classes.

One reviewer said "too many authors who don't know their stuff". Not true, while I was redoing the exercise, I perceived the style of each of them. Generally they're good. And when needed, the authors answer to my emails. I'm an experienced programmer, when something is bad, I can see it easily.

I come from a VB + ASP background, thanks to this book, I now have a pretty solid knowledge of .NET and a pure style C# programmer. I have had hard time to grasp the whole stuff but now I can tell you that I'm happy to leave the VB world.

I wholeheartly recommend this book to anyone who want to learn C# _AND_ how to make useful application with it. Be courageous, spend some time, you won't be disappointed.

It's very obvious this book is written by a staff. In attempting to hold your hand from the very most basic concept of a web page, to a fully database enabled ASP site (in 500 pages??), this book passes over nearly every necessary piece of information you could need. If you already know HTML, then half of this book is already worthless to you. And the authors of this book can't seem to decide whether they perfer HTML to XML, or VBScript to JScript. Examples of all of the above are scattered throughout the book, and leave you wondering which one you should know. Not to mention the "article style" format of this book, where each concept is intrduced and concluded in a 2 page block (whether the concept has been fully explored or not, they're gonna fit it into two pages), and right when you think you're going in one direction with ASP, they come in with an article about XML, and you're scratching your head again. My advice: if you know HTML, and you want to really learn how to program Active Server Pages, and not just scratch the surface, get a book on VBScript (not JScript) with more depth and less breadth.

The book on a whole was very informative. I learned quite a bit about ASP from reading it. The authors spend a lot of time towards the beginning of the book on XML and I'm not really sure what the connection between the two are. It almost seems like they should've written a separate book on XML rather than including it with this one. Also, I found quite a few typos throughout the book in the text and some of the code examples. Luckily I'm familiar enough with html that I was able to catch them, but for a beginner the errors could be really confusing.

The books was very helpful in my programming. I used many of the examples from book in my code. I think that if you are a beginner wanting to learn some Server side scripting this book will be an excellent place for you to start. Thanks

Pro: Good survey of ancient warfare from Ancient Egypt and Sumeria through the Roman Empire. Physical quality is excellent. The authors are knowledgeable and competent. Extensive use of drawings, maps and art work is useful and effective.
Con: Nothing really new here - much of the excellent art work is borrowed from older works. The authors cover the topics well but do not offer more insight into ancient warfare then previously offerred by earlier out-of-print works by authors such as John Wharry, Sir John Hackett, and Peter Connolly.
Bottom Line: If you need just one general purpose book on the subject, this does the job well. If you need more than a survey of ancient warfare, take a pass on this book and go after the works listed in the bibliography.

This is a very good book for a military historian to have. I liked the illustrations and tactical maps of significant battles. This book covers warfare in the classical world. The authors discuss the rise of various techniques, equipment and the sundry. For whatever reason, the Romans did not seem to develop anything new. They copied the old and improved on it.

First, I am a professional Visual C++ developer and bought this book to learn the new .NET extensions. After working myself through the first two detailed chapters I am left with a lot of definitions but am wondering how or why I would use this information. Perhaps this might make a good reference book, I have no idea how accruate the informaton is, but it is not a "primer" in he sense that you buy this book as a self taught learning aid. I'm bored out of my skull.

In case you are considering buying this book, be aware it was "written and tested for the final release of .Net v1.0". According to authors, many features on the final release of .NET v.10 were not working properly and therefore the sample does not work. The technical revision of this book was poor and the obvious errors in the code make me wonder if the code was ever tested or if one author read the previous chapter written separately by another author. Examples to illustrate this fact can be found on page 373, 396, 423 and many others (I only start taking notes about the pages by the end of the book when I decided I needed to write a review about it). The errors, added to the limitations on the final release of the product, disturb my reading more than if no spell checker was used.

Nevertheless, the book has some very good chapters and given that at the time I could not find any other book available on the subject, I read until the very last page. Hopefully now that .Net is out, the authors will do a second and carefully revised edition of the book.

Managed C++ is a very difficult area and there is not a lot of books in this area. Most of the books seem to concentrate on C# or VB.NET. This is sad because it seems like a lot of the current work to be done in .NET has a lot to do with taking the existing millions of lines of unmanaged code and COM code and making it work/or port to .NET. This can only be done with Managed C++. The book does not pupport to be a complete reference in this area. It states in the Introduction that "At heart, this book is pragmatic: its purpose is to tell experienced C++ programmers what they need to know about Visual C++.NET" and for the most part, I do believe that this has been accomplished.
The first chapter is quick overview on what's new in Visual C++.NET. This didn't do much for me but is a quick glance. Chapter 2 "Introduction to Managed C++" is quite good, IMHO. It takes all of the .NET concepts and shows the Managed C++ keywords to perform it. Chapter 3 on Assemblies is pretty good but does not drill down far enough. A tie to PE files is not made. I did learn quite a bit about Resources though which I did not understand before. Attributes and Reflection, Chapter 4 is excellent. These features are very important in .NET. Chapter 5 on .NET Framework utility classes, I felt was a good overview on something that could easily fill 1200 pages. I especially liked Chapters 7 and 8 "Managed and Unmanaged Code" and "COM Interoperability." I feel these are the heart of Managed C++. In Chapter 7, the authors do a fine job of presenting the differences between managed and unmanaged code and the IJW mechanism. I do feel that the example class chosen to be warpped, an integer linked list could have been better and doesn't cover all the cases. The P/Invoke discussion is quite good. The COM Interop chapter is excellent - it has good examples. All in all, I think that the authors did a fairly good job in writing about a fairly complex area.

The book is really only a cursory treatment of a small section of the Baja side of the Sea of Cortez. It implies, incorrectly, that there is no cruising area north of Mulege, and does not mention the mainland side at all. Although it doesn't say so, it is clearly designed as a basic guide for people chartering boats on short trips out of La Paz, NOT for long term cruisers coming into Mexico with their own boats. The information is incomplete, out of date and is so riddled with errors and inaccuracies as to make it pretty useless.

Here is an example of just one of the glaring oversights in this book: Mexico requires all vessels entering or leaving a port of entry to go through a very specific check-in/out process with the port captain, immigration and customs. Not following the required procedures and having the required paperwork can land you in trouble with the authorities. Yet this book not only has no description of the process, it never mentions it at all.

The book also implies that there are not decent charts available for the area, and that the sketches in the book are the best you are going to get. In fact, Gerry Cunningham's Cruising Charts publishes a multitude of detailed, highly accurate charts that cover the entire Sea of Cortez, and are far superior to what is in this book. The sketches in "The Cruising Guide" are no better than those in several other more complete guides.

In short, skip this book. You will be better served by Gerry Cunningham's guides and charts, Jack William's Boater's Guides to Baja and Charlie's Charts of the Western Coast of Mexico, all of which are more complete, up-to-date and detailed.