As a long time visiter to the Owens Valley I found this book to be excellent. Its great for the first time traveler or the person who has been to the valley many times. Its section on side roads is good for those passing through the area and wanting to explore a bit. The history and geology areas are current and answer those questions that arise when encountering the vast numbers of different geological features. While no one guide does it all this book comes close. A great book for those who want a general guide to the valley, its history,geology,flora and fauna.

This book is the last book in a series of books issued by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. It is a highly useful and interesting book for any Wisconsin history nut.

After reading the first chapter, I was taken in by the sophistication of this work. It is very deep, and the reader should choose a quiet place with pencil and paper in hand.

One of the most important goals of this work is to establish that modern philosophers (e.g., poststructuralists) did not mean that Ethics are relative - thus values education is not dead yet.

PJO

The Golden Age is another "Elseworlds" examination of comics history. By using such rarely seen characters as Captain Triumph and Mr.America along with the "big guns" of the era (Green Lantern, The Atom,etc.)James Robinson visits a Post WWII America where superheroes are considered suspect, and only those who conform are to be trusted. Using superheroes to comment on McCarthyism may seem to be a stretch, but Robinson makes the story challenging with many twists. The "alternate history" concept gives the author the freedom to take chances, but also eliminates the element of "this can't be happening" suspense. Too many sub plots (Hourman's addiction, Starman's breakdown) get in the way of the more compelling central tale.

Paul Smith's art is a wonder throughout. Shifting from the well-lit scenes of Dyna-man to Paul Kirk's despair, Smith constantly creates visuals that hold your attention and never let you forget the true wonder of this medium; the ability for two dimensional, brightly colored figures to fascinate and entertain.

This was the four-part Eleseworlds tale that put James Robinson on the map and set the stage for his history-spanning Starman series. It furthermore is regarded as the best thing anyone ever did with the original DC heroes since the actual Golden Age.

It's also a lot of fun. Great character play, sharp historic details - with a couple of odd exceptions - and top-notch art by Smith make this a must-read for super-hero comics readers. In addition, it's fairly accessible for newer readers since most of the stars of this comic are not that well-known and thus made accessible for once.

Much has been said about "Marvels" and "Kingdom Come" as being the best comics of the 1990s. But I'd gladly pit this against those, and with its grounding in the real world, it holds its own very nicely.

I'm a huge mark for Golden Age heroes. The major problem with the comic books of yesteryear is that the heroes were two dimensional, completely lacking in personality. They were all upstanding, usually rich, and basically boring, when not in costume. If it wasn't for the creative gimmicks and colorful costumes, the men and women behind the masks were interchangeable. James Robinson's updating of these classic Golden Agers is insightful and refreshing. He takes these legends and creates distinctive, and relatively believable, personal backgrounds for each of them. Yet he does this without diminishing the fun and nostalgia of those earlier tales. While congratulating Robinson, I feel inclined to point out the influence of Alan Moore's Watchmen. While Watchmen may have set the standard for alternate takes on the traditional DC/Marvel universes, Robinson and Smith's work here easily lives up to that lofty standard.

Paul Smith does a great job on the art, subtly employing updated pencilling techniques along with a very distinctive golden age era style. The colors in this book are also great, obviously far superior to the comic books of decades past. My only problem with the art lies with the lack of differentiation between some of the alter egos of these costumes heroes. Since most of these guys basically had the same blonde hair, chiseled features, erect postures, and well tailored suits back in the day, sometimes it's difficult to tell them apart, at least in the early chapters. As you read on, Robinson adds humanistic touches of doubts, addictions, regrets and redemption to enrich the characters well beyond their original incarnations.

This collection covers a complete story arc, which is great, but I must admit that I would love to read more tales of the Golden Age from James Robinson and Paul Smith. James Robinson is easily one of the top 5 to 10 comic book writers out there. Check out his popular, and critically acclaimed, Starman (another update of a Golden Ager) series if you don't believe me.

I was very excited when I saw this book hoping it'd open me all of the secrets of not-known-until-now world of HDL Synthesis. How wrong I was. The title is very misleading, the book spends just a few pages on synthesis. Overall, this book might be useful for a novice, but even for me, an undergrad ECE major, it turned out to be almost useless. It contains minimum of factual information, often outdated(and this is critical in the ECE world), and only slightly touches the surface on a number of topics it tries to cover. I think the authors whould have concentrated on something specific, instead of giving "what happened in Computer Engineering in last 15 years" review.

I have been a user of VHDL for the last three years and am now beginning to use Verilog, mostly because I am now doing ASIC development. For the new Verilog user, this book is excellent because it covers the gamut for an HDL and FPGA designer -- the syntax of the language,the difference between structural and behavioral constructs, simulation, hierarchical design, and of course the ubiqituous State Machine. Also included are some sections on targeting different types of technology, including standard cell. I found this book quite useful compared to other Verilog books I have purchased.

I have been searching for an Verilog book that will allow me to get up to speed quickly for an particular project. I wanted something that presented the syntax of the language in an clear manner but more importantly would give me an methodology to allow me to use Verilog in the design of an FPGA. This book seems to have "the right stuff". This book along with "Verilog HDL" by Samir Palnitkar seem to be the best that I have seen for learning Verilog