What might, but should not, surprise modern readers is that Spencer supported government intervention because laissez faire does not reject all intervention (1981 p.21). Indeed, laissez faire requires government intervention. Laissez faire is not anarchy because we already have a word for anarchy called "anarchy." Laissez faire is the exact opposite of anarchy because laissez faire is the rule of law. The premise of laissez faire is to establish the framework in which individuals may freely allocate resources, a legal framework established by government intervention to secure defense, fair trial and property rights (guaranteed process). Thus, a laissez faire government does not order what contract you must sign but, once you freely contract with someone, the laissez faire government is pledged to intervene to enforce your contract rights if the other party defrauds or reneges. This is opposed to the central planning of socialism which prevents individuals' free allocation of resources and freedom to contract in order to engineer some pre-ordained social goal (guaranteed result). Social democrats oppose many market results which occur when laissez faire "only" guarantees process-- although it is not quite clear how government central planning is more democratic than the market result from the aggregate preferences of millions of free-choosing consumers.

The other longstanding myth, which even modern conservatives propagate, is the false caricature of Spencer as a callous, social Darwinist and classic, Victorian scrooge. First, it is important to understand Spencer's argument that certain imperfections and undesirable results hardly invalidate laissez faire, because "it is not a question of absolute evils; it is a question of relative evils-- whether the evils at present suffered are or are not less than the evils which would be suffered under another system" (8). Although Spencer opposed the socialism of many "progressives," it is clear that Spencer was a progressive who desired the amelioration of the common man and working poor-- improvements most likely gained by laissez faire, according to Spencer. In this 1891 book, Spencer took pains to avoid any misunderstanding on this crucial point, although his ideological enemies and history seemed happy to ignore his efforts: "Let me again repudiate any erroneous inference. Any one who supposes that the foregoing argument implies contentment with things as they are, makes a profound mistake. ... My opposition to socialism results from the belief that it would stop the progress to such a higher state and bring back a lower state. ... It is not then, chiefly in the interests of the employing classes that socialism is to be resisted, but much more in the interests of the employed classes" (p.29-32). Thus, the other benefit of this book is to indicate the humane compassion of this poor, traduced, laissez faire advocate.

This is the advantage of primary sources; to read not what others wrote about Spencer's thoughts and writing but to read what the man actually wrote. A greater effort to verify claims by primary sources would redress a legion of falsehoods. This book provides not just the original writings of Spencer but those of numerous, able thinkers of the Victorian era.

These books sold for 75 cents or 95 cents originally. They were great little educational tools when I was a schoolboy, and I could still read them with profit many years later.

The more specialized ones, such as Pond Life, Structural Geology, The Heart, Insect Pests, Spiders and Their Kin, Mushrooms and Non-Vascular plants, were also very good.

Lillis had spent the last 10 years of her life in a convent and was anxious to get home, now she was being held prisoner by this hateful person who was undeniably handsome and already betrothed to a beautiful cousin. In order to save his people from ruin because of her father's demented anger Lillis was forced to wed this man, so that he could gain her 'bride's portion' which was the land and river that her father had dammed up.

What follows is an absolutely wonderful tale of wheeling and dealing medeival style. This was a very fast moving story, with many plots and subplots that were skillfully woven together and tied up so quite nicely.

I really enjoyed this story, my first by this author and I look forward to reading the rest she has to offer.

Alexander Baldwin was known as an honorable knight, yet to Lillis he was nothing more than a bully who had married her for her dowered lands. A man who had not only made her his prisoner, but had slowly, and ruthlessly, stolen her heart.

Lots of good examples & code that really illustrates what is going on. I got a toy XML page working in no time at all.

This book should appeal to programmers who are comfortable with ASP & web tech in general. Definitely not for beginners.

The appendices are very useful. The entire XML 1.0 specification is there as well as an XSL reference.

One of the other reviewers criticized the dependence on IE5, but then, IE5 is the only browser that supports XML client-side.

If I had a couple of criticisms they would be the layout and the editing. But these are small flaws that do not get in the way of a very solid book.

This is not an introductory text. As with most Wrox "Professional" titles, Spencer presumes a certain level of experience on his reader's behalf. I find these titles to be exactly what I desire: not too simple to be trivial, and yet not as dry as a pure reference text.

XML has been a hot topic for over a year now. As a result, more and more people are trying to get a grasp of this technology. Most of the XML books that I have read (and I own a few) provide reasonable explanations of it. I found that understanding the concepts of XML was simple; it was trying to figure out where to use it that was difficult. These beginning books told me the "how," but not the "when."

"Professional XML Design and Implementation" fills this void nicely. The entire book is dedicated to explaining a realistic scenario from end to end. I will note that this book does focus entirely on Microsoft's implementation of XML, but this is a reasonable choice: even at the present time, IE 5.0 or greater is the only released browser that supports XML (I am not including Netscape 6 PR1 through 3 simply because they are still in beta).

Along the way, Spencer provides us with a clear commentary as to why he made certain design decisions. He also attempts to include some instruction. Most of it is still accurate, but the section on XSL is now very outdated.

The application itself is pretty creative. The code behind it is diverse: server side scripting is used to build XML from data stored in a database; client side scripting is used to build XML data within a browser without requiring round trips. One particularly interesting feature was to save the work done on the client side in a cookie so that it could persist between sessions, before finally being submitted to the server.

I believe that most companies who are interested in XML at the time of this review are more interested in B2B (business to business) scenarios than B2C (business to consumer) ones. The limited browser support mentioned above makes this a reasonable assumption. The last chapter of the book entitled "The Transactional System" provdies some good insight into how XML can be used in a B2B environment.

A small drawback is that the book does not contain (and therefore does not review) the entire code listing for this application. Thankfully the files are available on Wrox' Web site.

This is a great book if you already have at least a cursory understanding of XML, and are looking to understand more about its application. If you are still struggling with the "what is XML?" question, then I recommend that you start with a different title than this one, especially when you consider that the XML/XSL standards have evolved considerably since its writing.

Senet arrives at Lomas with his band of knights, and Katharine pretends to accept her fate--until night falls and she flees. Senet of course,finds her and forces Katharine to return. Senet proves to be a fair Lord and they both discover their mutual attraction, but of course never mentioning to each other that it exists.

The secondary characters, provide good background and the story flows quickly. The introduction of Katherine's cousin Kiernan who she had posing as her long lost betrothed, does give some very good humorous dialog. The story is good but did end awfully quickly. Deadlines perhaps, otherwise would have rated a 5*.