Following the intricacies of Japanese codes have been a daunting task for me.I feel author ought to have explained this with diagrams or sketches which would have simplified the subject for a lay man like me.Precisely this is what Simon Singh has done in his path breaking work 'Code Book'.Book contains character profiles of leading British code breakers who served in the Far Eastern theatre of war.Author sidetracks a lot giving florid accounts of their personal lives.I found this very dragging.

However there is some interesting information .Nazi leader had a hunch that Normandy would be the site for D day landings although evidence pointed to Pas de Calais.This was known because Anglo-Amercans were reading messages sent Japanese ambassador in Berlin to Foreign office in Tokyo.This fore knowledge helped Allies to fine tune their deception.Other pertains to atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Potsdam declaration by the big Three told Japan to surrender unconditionally.Japan was willing provided Anglo-Americans were willing to respect Emperor's status.Latter accepted this demand Still nuclear bombs were dropped .Why? Author justifiably expresses shock and surprise at this Allied decision.The incident has continued to baffle me to this day.Is Truman and Churchill guilty of perpetrating mass murder?

After barely surviving his previous attempt to wrest control, Jeremiah has returned from the underground in the Dakotas accompanied by millions of his followers. His military advisors have taken control of the vast military assets in South Dakota. Jeremiah demands the Feds recognize the independence of his New America. To insure their compliance, his crew has taken control of a nuclear plant in Maryland.

Meanwhile, Jeremiah kidnaps reporter Laura Delany, who he insists is preordained as the mother of the Prophet's heir. Laura's spouse FBI agent Steve Wallace tries to free her. He ultimately succeeds with insider's help, but not before Jeremiah plants his seed inside Laura's womb. Jeremiah controls a trained and efficient militia of over 100,000 troops armed with modern weaponry. With that type of fire power at his disposal, the world wonders whether the second American Civil War will have a different ending than the previous one. Than again, Jeremiah also has a personal vendetta to kill Steve and recapture his "wife" and recently born child.

The second novel starring the evil prophet Jeremiah requires a grand canyon of a stretch by even the most die hard fans of nonsensical religious terrorism. However, once that is accomplished, the novel becomes a one sitting read. Jeremiah remains an intriguing character, and the support cast are caricatures that enable the auience to feel Jerimiah's evil. Michael A.Smith shows with his brilliant prose that he is a very talented writer. However, he never decides whether the story line is a religious thriller or a military thriller, leaving the military segment a more developed piece, but neither side fully detailed. Still, the endind is set up so Jeremiah can have book III.

Harriet Klausner

Why? Because you'll use it, and use it well. Almost everyone involved in Tcl has questions (so how do I really compile a Tcl script? How much does it take to do drag-and-drop and tool tips? Are the RDBMS extensions current with vendor features? ...) answered here. Simplify your life by putting these 650+ pages on your shelf.

What is *Tcl/Tk Tools*? It's a collection of descriptions of different popular extensions to Tcl and Tk. While lead author Harrison gives the impression they're written by "the extension authors themselves", there are a few exceptions to this pattern. The book is not written as a tutorial or introduction to Tcl, sagely pointing to John Ousterhout and Brent Welch's books for that role (although I've been thinking of experimenting with putting *Tcl/Tk Tools* in the hands of novices, to see what would happen. I suspect they'd survive in good shape).

*Tcl/Tk Tools* isn't exhaustive. It doesn't include several of my favorite extensions, including Scotty, NeoWebScript, stooop, tclMsql, the PlusPatches, ... It doesn't matter. If you care about only *one* of the extensions described here, you'll do well to have your own copy.

Harrison and his co-authors do a good job of hitting the target of telling "Here's the philosophy behind this package, and here are some examples of how to use it effectively" that he lays out in the Preface. While it's easy to move from one chapter to another, it's not at the expense of the authors and their personalities. D. Richard Hipp's thoughtful precision and De Clarke's care in engineering effective solutions come through, as do the assurance and lucidity those in the Tcl community expect of Don Libes. Less successful is the forward look that Harrison intended, toward "the plans the extension authors had for future enhancements and extensions." I assume this was in part a casualty of the realities of the publishing cycle; certainly many of the chapters appear to have been finished before the appearance a year ago of 7.6's betas.

Two unglamorous aspects of the book multiply its value: the index is sound (that's saying a lot for me; I have high standards in indexing), and Harrison's Chapter 17 on what he calls "Configuration Management" lays out much valuable wisdom that newcomers need to learn. Reading the latter is painful: it has all the important, tedious subjects ("Combining Extensions ...", command-line munging, ...) one wants--but without mention of Win* or loadable libraries! These frailties are inevitable when broadcasting on dead trees, of course. What's disappointing is that *Tcl/Tk Tools* doesn't go farther in joining the Internet Age: although a two-page Appendix lauds news:comp.lang.tcl and lists the FAQs and nine URLs (some of which have already moved, of course), and individual authors take it on themselves to provide appropriate references,
* it's not apparent that there is any page where Harrison and/or O'Reilly maintain errata, updates, new examples, funny animal GIFs, or any of the other resources readers might be expected to exploit--I couldn't find one at the URL the Preface gave, nor elsewhere at www.ora.com;
* some authors supply no e-mail addresses;
* some authors give references ("look in the archives") that will be inscrutable for those not already in the know; and
* there is wide variation in the quality of information authors give about extension prospects, bug lists (a particular sore point with me), mailing lists, and so on.
Understand, please, that I'm not labeling these moral faults; as on every project, the good engineering comes in deciding where to make the cuts, and what definite values to deliver. I personally look forward to seeing books that build a more dynamic relationship with online sources, and am simply noting that *Tcl/Tk Tools* doesn't achieve that standard.

The quality of production is high, higher even than the elevated expectations I have of O'Reilly. Typos, mistakes in word choice, and code errors seem to sum to around zero to five per chapter. Screen shots are judicious and illuminating, rather than gratuitously space-filling. The CD-ROM (with binaries for indeterminate but predictable releases of Solaris and Linux) does the little I asked of it.

Summary: whether you're a full-time Tcl-er or a greenhorn, you'll profit from having *Tcl/Tk Tools* at hand. Whenever you're in a pinch, there's a fair chance the Index and/or Table of Contents will quickly lead you to a useful datum. During more contemplative moments, you'll want to read the chapters in a connected fashion, and the accuracy and insight of the authors will make you glad that you do.

The email addresses listed as publisher contacts for this book came back as 'unknown'. I began to wonder: Did they have so many complaint emails they canceled the email accounts?

I pushed on through the book to discover coding errors in the examples as well.

I give this book a 'thumbs down' and will avoid buying SAMS publishing books in the future.

(If I had known about Amazon's rating system at the time I purchased the book, I would have avoided this loss of good $)