As I've written elsewhere (in Rain Taxi, a review of books, to be exact), Smith's biography hardly does justice to the memory of poet Kenneth Patchen. Besides claiming Baudelaire is a Spanish poet(!), Smith practically ignores Patchen's energetic, highly individual work in favor of detailing the poet's politics and undeniably painful medical history, which is not how any poet of Pathcen's talents would want to be remembered. What's more unfortunate than Patchen's record of ill health is that his poetry and novels and art continue to be overlooked after his death - just as they were during his difficult life. If ever an American poet deserved critical reconsideration, it's Mr. Kenneth Patchen. Before you spend your good money on this self-published socio-political diatribe, please purchase every Patchen book that remains in print. Then buy second copies to give as gifts. Fans of e.e. cummings, one of Patchen's many writerly pals, should really enjoy Patchen's work.

Despite what Brian Beatty says,and his review is full of factual inaccuracies and personal bias, this is a strong book, and an essential work of scholarship on an important American writer. Smith has done his homework and delivered a memorable biography. Read it and see.

This is a work of much labor that obviously went straight to the sources for information and really investigated the history that prompted such powerful poetry and fiction. Patchen is a heroic example of a person who maintained his pacifist stance when the world around him was exploding and brought his beautiful vision to Earth. This biography is written with a kind of tenderness and honesty that Patchen valued above all else. Thanks Larry Smith for this labor of love.

The book is not bad and somewhat practical. If it was sold for half of its present retail price, I'd give it 4 stars.

I am the senior web developer at a small company looking for a good book to bring my less-experienced people up to speed on JSP. I bought this book because the introduction says, "This book is designed to teach you JSP, even if you have no Java experience whatsoever." Sadly that is not true.
Just three pages into Chapter 2, 'Creating a JSP Page', the author hits you with several pages of Java source code as he compares and contrasts the java source produced by JRun, Tomcat, etc as a result of processing a simple JSP page.
The first piece of JSP you see is the page directive, and this topic begins with references to java packages. First, I would think that there are kindler, gentler ways to dip ones toe into the JSP waters. Surely some simple JSPs could be written that do not require the <%@page import...> directive, saving this subject for later. And even so, the explanation of packages would make no sense to someone who did not already understand java.
And so it goes throughout this book.

I have some programming experience but am new to Java/JSP. I choose this book to start out with and am about half way through working all the examples by hand using Forte for Java CE and then "deploying" them to a seperate test server running Tomcat 4.0. Basically, there are several errors in the example code in the book. Some of these are fixed on the versions on the cd - some not. I've wasted many hours scouring the net and pulling my hair out to get the examples to compile and work in both Forte for Java CE and Tomcat 4.0 - EXTREMELY frustrating for newbies like me. Too bad, since otherwise the book is pretty well written. Don't assume the example code is correct and you'll be okay.

The book doesn't teach you much on the strategy on MTG. It's just too simple. For the thickness of this book, I expected more from it.

[originally written in 1997]
Yes, I do play the game. I first saw it being played at MileHiCon in Denver in 1992, and I kick myself for not buying cards then (that would have been alpha edition cards...). I kept hearing about the game, and finally picked up my first deck at a small gaming convention here in the Tri-Cities. While it's not been an obsession, as it can be with some people, I do waste more time on it than I should. When I first started to play, I got Jill to play with me, but then I rooked in some co-workers, and now it is the daily game at lunch that keeps us constantly creating and tweaking our decks.

If you have never heard of Magic: The Gathering, then you are probably quite confused by now. In a nutshell, Magic was created by a mathematics professor from Walla Walla to be a simple little game that could be played by two people in 30 minutes. Instead, he created a marketing monster. You buy cards to make up your playing set like baseball cards--random cards are sealed in foiled packs so you have no idea what you are getting when you buy them. From all these random cards, you and your opponent make up decks of around 60 cards each. The game is a contest of warring wizards, casting spells that summon creatures and enchantments to attack or otherwise reduce the opponent wizard's life to 0 from a starting amount of 20. For a simple game, it becomes quite complicated after that, because there are now over 1000 different cards to select for your decks, thus ensuring that almost every game you play will be different.

The book at hand tries to make sense of some of the chaos surrounding the game by discussing the mathematics of deck building (why you shouldn't play with more than 60 cards, what percentage of "mana"-- the magic that fuels spells--you need, etc.), and strategies of play. When this book was published, it was more relevant; today, I would not recommend this book except for those Internet Magic players because many of the deck ideas discussed herein involve out-of-print cards that would cost a fortune to actually possess. Magic is something like the Internet--it changes rapidly, and what might have been a workable strategy four months ago is likely a quick defeat today (or outlawed in tournament play).

I have read this book cover to cover one ten times! This book not only helps you learn how to build competitive decks, it helps you understand why you should build the deck how you are building it. It has a formula for building decks which I never ignore. I learn more and more from this book each time I read it. No matter if you are the world champion or you just learned howw to play, you should definitly read this book. A must for any magic player!!!

On the whole, I will not comment on the software itself, as it is a great tool in general; anyone familiar with the print edition will also very find this edition useful.
However, I do wish to warn anyone who thinks that the setup of this program will be particularly easy. Do not be fooled into thinking that by buying a CD-rom you will get all of the software at once. Instead, the CD includes an internet software package called "AvantGo," which, after successful setup will have you download the software to install onto your handheld.
This part of the setup I found rather disappointing. Why bother packaging a CD when you will have the customer do is go online afterwards?
Customer service provided by the publisher is non-existent (I sent them a question, but never received a reply--it's been two weeks now).
Finally, on the back cover of the CD case, the description mentions that images could be installed onto your handheld. In my hands, this is not the case.

So, on the whole, I would give 5 stars to the information provided by the software (once correctly installed), but only 1 star for the packaging, ease of installation, and customer service I received . . . hence the "average" 3 star rating.

I bought this book, hoping to find a tutorial approach. The book claims to have 'working code examples on disk', with 'hundreds of code examples'. Note that each of these code examples is around 10 lines.

While these two claims are true, the buyer should be aware that this is not intended to be a tutorial book, more a reference. It is a reference of exactly how to write the syntax of every WordBasic language element. Once you know the command you want to use, and what you want to use it for, this book will tell you the setup and exact syntax to use that command. For this purpose, it is excellent.

This book is not intended to be a guide or tutorial for what commands you should use, and it is not useful for that purpose.

Not sure why this one's even still listed. There are *two* newer volumes. 6 is the most recent (fall 2000)

The Pharmers Almanac vol. 4 is definitely another Phish triumph. This book includes all the info a hardcore Phish phan needs to know. After reading multiple Phish books and learning what I thought was everything I could about the band, I was once again amazed and I learned much more than I ever thought possible from just one book. From including the much loved Phishy sense of humor to getting down to the songs that you don't hear to much about, this book is a definite recomendation. The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because I want to leave room for an even better Phish book. BUY IT!

I think this book may have been written in 3 days also!!! Just another book to catch the VB 5 Wave. Let get real, try out "Teach Yourself Visual Basic 5 in 21 Days" by Nathan Gurewich and Ori Gurewich this book it what you want!

This book should not be in print. It is so full of errors, and the writing style is so poor that I did not have the patience to tolerate more than 40 pages of it. It begins by teaching you how to create a directory in Windows explorer. I think they could assume you know how to use Windows as a pre-req.

I found this book to be very basic... After you're done reading it ...is useless =( It teaches you VB programming terminology and concepts. The whole entire book has a goal of teaching the reader by following 1 example program which you reproduce and go into deltails as you learn the simple concepts of logic.

...if you have a basic knowledge of porgramming in vb or any other language ....don't bother with this book....leave it to the beginner...but then again.... once your done with the book ...only good thing you can do is give it to someone else.

-College Student

Although this was one of the first M:TG books available, it desperately needs revising. It has many factual rules errors. It should really be withdrawn from the market. George Baxter, also of Wordware Press, has published a much better introduction to Magic book