This book is very unique in its approach to industrial electronics and control systems. I particularly liked the chapters on programmable controllers and robotics. It is very well written and it is obvious that the author knows a lot about the subject. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in industrial electronics and its applications.

A fascinating study of industrial electronics incorporating hundreds of practical applications and written in a very straightforward, easy-to-understand style. The author has done a great job of describing the various types of industrial electronic equipment used in the workplace and has gone to great lengths to explain some of the most important aspects.

I found this book to be extremely useful and highly recommend it to anyone.

I bought this book six months ago and decided to research other books by this author. He has a unique writing style that makes it easier to understand some of the more difficult electronics concepts, such as microprocessors. I really liked the book a lot and would recommend it to anyone who is studying to become an Electronics Engineer, but its also good for Electronics Technicians.

I found this book to be very helpful in my studies of electronics. The author has done a great job in explaining electronics. Most books use a lot of math that can be extremely confusing for first year students, but this author has found a way to describe the subject without going into unneccesary detail. The book is thorough but not to the point where students lose sight of the fundamentals.

This textbook is the first of its kind to take the extremely difficult subject of electronics and make it easier to understand. As an electronics teacher, I have been using the book for the past year and have found that attrition in my class has fallen by 40% since I started using it. Students love the writing style and I find the comprehensive coverage to be a perfect fit with my classroom lectures.

In my 20 years as a teacher I have never found a better textbook on the subject of electronics.

A note to readers -- the first half of this book is more of a chronicle of WW I than an account of the Lusitania. If you're just a disaster buff, you'll probably like the Titanic stories better than this. The author explains in his final note that he deliberately focused on the historical context and meaning of this event rather than the minutia of the sinking itself (as he does in his Titanic book). I personally enjoyed the WWI refresher. There are still many unanswered questions about the ship's death -- did Churchill deliberately let it be struck to draw the US into battle? We may never know. The author does a nice job of putting this event in context. The sinking chapters are shorter than you'd think (heck, the ship went down in 18 minutes) but there is a lot of juicy background stuff here.

A wonderfully revealing history of the chicanery and deceit used in transferring much of European art into today's U.S. museums. Simpson is detailed and thorough in researching the history of the House of Duveen and connecting well known Art Historian Bernard Berenson to the early 20th century's version of today's internet speculation game

Exquisitely written account of two luxury liners pressed into military service in the early years of the WWI. The writer very adeptly steers his readers through many vignettes detailing the respective crew's actions to disguise their vessels, the eventual battle between these behemoth ships, and the tragedy that follows. Outstanding in every respect, this book is a must for collectors of seaborn adventure stories.

I've used Simpson to teach PLC basic at a community college in Vancouver, WA. It is a good solid text that covers much of the basics of PLCs and PLC applications. The book does not focus on one PLC brand, but uses programming examples from Modicon, Allen-Bradley and Texas Instruments controllers. Simpson has some good programming examples, but could use more.

There are two issues I have with the text. The most important is that the information is dated. For example the Allen-Bradey information is all relevant to the PLC-2, a product that was obsoleted not long after the publication date, if not before. (Very confusing for my students who are trying to learn AB SLC-500 addressing which is completely different.) Second, there is very little about I/O types (AC, DC, triac, FET, etc.) and some of the important characteristics of each. If this book were revised with an eye to current industry practices, I would give it a much stronger recomendation.

Although some of the material (such as discussion of the A/B PLC-2) is somewhat dated, the fundamentals of PLCs is covered so well that it more than makes up for this short-coming.

Its a well-written book by an author who obviously has a lot of experience in the field. I particularly liked the chapter on sequencers and found the introductory chapters to be very useful as well.

I read this book to make a speech for my AP European History class, and while I was reading it, I slept through a lot of it. Since I did not understand too much of the book, I sunk just like how the Lusitania did. In my opinion, the names of the people were too long (i.e. Wind"shaft"ston Church"n'priest"hill"n'mountain") got me all confused. But on the other hand, Simpson had some pretty good ideas and he seemed like he was a German spy, but he also had British views too. The Titanic is a much easier speech and Kate Winslet gets naked in the movie.

I've read this title several times, and it's one of those few that get better each time. This is NOT a human interest type of book for the casual reader. It also challenges the "East Coast Establishment" view, which has dominated our history books for so long. Simpson examines many topics in detail, including the political and naval background as well as cargo, manifesting and port clearance procedures, and comes up with a most fascinating and documented tale. Although I can't agree with all his arguments and inferences, I think his conclusions in the main are correct. I would recommend this book highly to any serious student of the event.

I could recommend this book to every aspiring travel writer as an example of what not to do. I was totally uninterested as to what wine the writer ate with his dinner, the quality of his seat on the airplane, or any other of the zillions of details he insisted on providing. I was interested to know his impressions of the people and cultures he found in those very interesting lands he visited. I did not find out. This book was written for readers of the Ladies Home Companion, I reckon.