I bought this for the Bujold, but worth the read for all the other stories. Interesting to see how the genre has changed over the decades.

This seventeen-story anthology displays the opening or a very early entry of some of the great speculative fiction authors of the twentieth century. Each tale contains an introduction written by the author or posthumously by someone close to the writer. Using the perfection of hindsight, readers will quickly understand why writers like de Camp. Clarke, McCaffrey, etc. became household names at least in those homes that relish a delightful science fiction anthology. Each tale is well written, but also intriguing is the intro. Genre fans will gain immense pleasure from seeing the WONDROUS BEGINNINGS of a virtual who's who, but newcomers will relish this book also because the collection provides an overture to some of the superstars of the genre.

Harriet Klausner

the first chapter will have you hooked. this is a scary read, and the detail is riveting. even though the events are pulse-quickening, there is well-placed humor in which the author seems to be winking at us. the conclusion, often the downfall of many mysteries, is completely consistant with the logic of the whole story. however, as with most murder mystery/police procedurals, skip the obligatory romance, this time involving the #2 male lead and an asian police department computer programmer, in which the dialogue is sophomoric and many of the references nigh-racist. would have been 5 stars if it weren't for the love affair.

This was one book that I could not put down. Although I read it several months ago I can not stop thinking about it.

Steve Martin Cohen has an excellent imagination, along with his ability to write and create unique characters that means one heck of a book.

If you liked Silence of the Lambs then you will love this over the edge thriller. Just remind me not to bumb into Mr. Cohen in a dark alley at night!

I enjoyed this book, and I want to read more. Could someone leave more titles by this author in another review? Or how I could find them, for they seem to be out of print? Thanks

Being in the legal field, I have fun reading legal thrillers. The Judge is a fast read and enjoyable but realistic it is not. The main character is an attorney, Madriani, who is drawn into defending Judge Acosta in a murder trial. Madriani throughout the story breaks laws, lawyers ethical rules, and attorney client rules. He would be disbarred in the real world. Plus he isn't quick enough to catch a major piece of evidence that is basically dropped in his lap until the very end of the story. The story moves quickly both in the courts and by reading. Suspending any real world legal knowledge made it more enjoyable. I think a little more realistic take on being a lawyer would have worked, maybe Mr. Martinin didn't have the time to figure out others ways to achieve the same end results but without destroying his main character's character.

This is my first courtroom thriller, so I have no basis for comparison (except for Grisham's The Firm, which sucks). What I liked about The Judge is it has many things going for it: 1. Characters - all the players have personality and presence. 2. Lean narrative, good dialogue, no extraneous details. 3. Excitement. The trial scenes were great. 4. Style. I like how Martini sizes things up.

The book is an easy read. In fact, Martini could have fleshed out the book with more information and twists and the story would still be taught. What he managed to do is only admit critical elements to the story to make it a story and keep it engaging. I hope to read more of his works.

I have long considered Mr. Martini one of the best (if not THE best) legal/thriller author writing today, and this is MY personal favorite of all his great novels. If you have read any of Martini's previous Paul Madriani novels, you know that he and 'The Coconut' Judge Acosta have crossed paths a few times in the past--always an unpleasant experience, especially for Attorney Madriani. Judge Acosta just doesn't like him--pure and simple--actually 'doesn't like' isn't strong enough.

As the story begins Judge Acosta finds himself in a most awkward position of being accused of soliciting a prostitute. He is removed from the bench pending an investigation. But it doesn't take long before the leading witness for the prosecution against the Judge is found deceased...uh oh. The Judge is now in SERIOUS trouble...so much so that he actually contemplates something that he never EVER would have thought could happen in a million years: He hires the attorney that he despises, Paul Madriani. This murder/mystery/courtroom drama is impressive from beginning to its surprising and absolutely fantastic ending--in MY opinion this has Martini's best ending to date and certainly one of my favorites in fiction. The courtroom drama is clever, surprising and utterly compelling. Several laugh-out-loud moments, too (which came as a complete surprise to me) and an all-around tremendous plot. Easily one of the best in this particular genre I have ever read, and also ranks (again in MY opinion) as Mr. Martini's best novel to date (that includes 'The List' and 'Critical Mass'). Get to know Paul Madriani, the sooner the better, but I recommend starting with 'Compelling Evidence' the novel that debuted Madriani and continue from there. Highly Recommended.

I was never a fan of Steve Martini, and, unfortunately or not, I will not be one after having listened to this audio adaptation. Now, sometimes bad audio versions of book can be due to the ineptness of the reader. But Joe Mantegna's reading was full of energy and nuance, what there was available. I believe the problem lies within the source material. Martini has committed the cardinal sin of courtroom thrillers--he's made them boring.

This was my first Steve Martini book. The book is about Paul Madriani, a divorced criminal trial lawyer, who had an affair with Talia, his boss' wife, and was eventually let go from the firm. He is on his own when Ben, his former boss, is brutally murdered and Talia is accused of the crime. He defends her in court.

The storyline behind this courtroom thriller is absolutely fantastic. It took about 100 pages for the book to get really interesting, but once the story took off, I couldn't let go of the book. I can't wait to read one of his other books and I hope you enjoy 'Compelling Evidence' as much as I did.

Paul Madriani, the protagonist, abruptly left the law firm of Potter, Skarpellos three years ago when Ben Potter discovered that Paul was doing motel briefs with Ben's vivacious wife, Talia. As the story opens, Ben, on his initiative, meets with Madriani for the first time since Paul left the firm. First, they discuss the disposition of Paul's terminated affair with Talia, and agree never to mention it again. Then, Ben reveals that his being selected to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court will be announced soon, and invites Paul to take over administration of an important trust fund since Ben will not have time for this responsibility in his new position. Paul accepts and they agree to meet again for dinner the following night to discuss the details.

Shortly before the appointed hour for their next meeting, however, Ben supposedly blows away the top of his head with a shotgun. No one really believes that Ben Potter killed himself though, and sure enough, we learn that not a shotgun, but a small caliper pistol like the one Talia owns was the true murder weapon. Guess what! Talia is charged with murder and Paul Madriani, assisted by "tell it like it is" Harry are her lawyers.

The drama unfolds with manageable twists, turns and surprises. The cops and the DA seemed convinced that Talia did it, but the reader is soon convinced that she's innocent, so the story has a "whodunit" element along with the courtroom drama. Martini sets his story in "Capital City" in an unnamed State, which I suspect allows him to mix and match actual legal rules and proceedings from different jurisdictions to suit his plot and courtroom activity. This is not obtrusive, at least for a non-lawyer.

It's a satisfying read; something to do while your waiting for the next Grisham novel.

The text in paperback form was quite inexpensive. The book was organized into easily digestible chapters with insightful DSM classifications. The chapter on sexual disorders was quite explicit. Our instructor skipped it in lecture.

This horror anthology provides fans with the introductory story that seventeen reader favorites started their illustrious respective career (déjà vu with last month's MAGICAL BEGINNINGS). The contributions are fun to read if only to compare the opening gamut of a renowned author with their most recent work. Each tale provides an introduction that brings further focus on the writer. The collection is well done with delightful selections from a virtual who's who of the genre, but the quality varies though none are horrible. As with MAGICAL BEGINNINGS, HORRIBLE BEGINNINGS is more for the die-hard horror guru than the occasional horror reader.

Harriet Klausner

This fantasy anthology provides fans with the introductory story that sixteen fan favorites started their illustrious respective career. The contributions are fun to read though the quality varies with none being atrocious, but not all sixteen being incredibly fantastic. With each tale, the author of that story furnishes an interesting introduction that includes insight and understanding into their career. Clearly not for the casual genre reader, the fascination is not just with each tale, albeit as engaging they are, but also to compare the MAGICAL BEGINNINGS with recent releases from a virtual who's who.

Harriet Klausner

Excellent guide book for neurological practitioner. Simple and systematic description in every chapter and many chapters dealing with numerous clinical topics. But weak index because this is the 1st Ed.

A.C. Cawley's edition of the Wakefield Master's plays and the Early English Text Society editions have provided the touchstone for classroom presentation of studies of the Towneley cycle, but they sacrifice what Jerome McGann calls the "bibliographic codes," that sense of the manuscript's distinctive qualities appearing in such elements as layout on the page, handwriting, and marginalia. This 1976 facsimile makes a useful scholarly and pedagogical counterweight: advanced students in particular should study the manuscript along with the Cawley edition to see how he handles his source. With any luck, someone will eventually produce a color CD-ROM of Huntington HM1: until they do, all interested readers should have this.

I guess I expected that a platform independent standard such as XML would have been better expained using a platform independent language such as java. For the unix/java engineers out there....this book contains much useful information and don't get me wrong, I learned a lot. The question is, would I have learned as much or possibly more if I didn't have to put up with 90% of the code examples written in VBScript? Many examples require Internet Explorer. Content was up-to-date and informative but somewhat repetative (12 authors).

The book covers too many topics and just few are developed in deep while others are superficially introduced because not yet standardized at the time of print. The book claims it covers the following topics: XML, XSLT, DOM, DTD, SOAP, XLink, XPointer, XPath, WAP, WML...and more; but just XML, Schemas, DTDs and SOAP could almost fit the book's size.

Chapters don't follow a very logic thread and it doesn't deal enough with very relevant subjects. Wrox probably planned to make this book the XML bible but I think they are far from the target.

The XML declarative language, with its adaptability and expressive power, is continuing to become the language of choice for reporting and classifying information. XML is a formal grammar that captures the syntactic features of a document type definition, and its properties, syntax, and applications are discussed effectively in this book. It covers XML as formalized by the W3C and the authors show how to use XML in Web-based and database applications. Readers who have developed applications in HTML will probably view XML as somewhat more abstract, since the visual representation of the content of a document is not emphasized in XML. Readers are expected to have a background in HTML, JavaScript, Java, and ASP in order to read the book. Although XML can be learned by reading the W3C specifications, these documents are frequently difficult reading, and this book makes the learning of XML much easier than reading these specifications. They include the W3C specifications for XML 1.0 in an appendix to the book for the interested reader. The book is a little dated, since the W3C has been updating XML specs since the time of publication (especially with regard to schemas), but there is a 2nd edition coming out soon.

In Chapter 1, XML is introduced as a mark-up language and its inherent extensibility emphasized. This is followed by a detailed treatment of XML syntax in the next chapter, with emphasis placed on the hierarchical nature of XML. The authors do include a discussion of Processing Instructions (PIs) for users who want to use XML in this fashion.

Document Type Definitions (DTD) are the subject of Chapter 3, where the authors communicate effectively how DTDs formal grammar is used to specify the structure and permissible values of XML documents. The formal DTD structure is discussed, and the principles behind writing DTDs are effectively outlined. They also discuss the problems with using DTDs.

Data modeling with XML is discussed in the next chapter, with information modeling via static and dynamic models treated in detail, and the authors carefully distinguish these two approaches. The actual designing of XML documents is given a nice overview as well as the role of schemas in XML. This is followed in Chapter 6 by a discussion of the (tree-based) Document Object Model, which overviews how XML documents can be accessed by various programs. Some helpful examples are given on how the DOM can be used to create an XML document programmatically. An alternative way of processing an XML document is discussed in the next chapter on the (event-based) SAX interface. The authors outline in detail the benefits of using SAX rather than DOM. In Appendix B the reader will find the Internet Explorer 5.0 XML DOM 1.0 W3C specifications. In addition, in Appendix C, the specification for the SAX 1.0 interface is given.

The shortcomings of DTD are addressed in terms of XML Schemas and namespaces in chapter 7. Since this book was published, XML Schemas have reached W3C recommendation status as of Nov 2000. The authors give a good overview of namespaces and schemas, with helpful examples. This is followed in chapter 8 by a discussion of how to link and query into XML documents using the XML information set, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XML Fragment Interchange, with XLST covered in the next chapter. For database applications, the authors outline the differences between relational databases and XML documents. A very detailed treatment of how XLST transforms the source document is given, and the authors compare XLS and DOM transformations. An Internet Explorer XSL reference is included in one of the appendices of the book.

More details on the relationship between databases and XML is the subject of chapter 10, wherein the authors show how to store XML and how data can be communicated between different servers using XML. The issues involved when moving data from RDBMS to OODBMS or from Oracle to Sybase, are discussed by the authors. This is followed by an interesting discussion on how to use XML as a distributed component model for server-to-server communications via XML-Remote Procedure Call and Simple Object Access Protocol.

E-commerce applications are discussed in the next chapter, with EDI and its improvement via XML. The business markup language cXML , which allows business to business electronic commerce transactions across the Internet, is also treated in detail.

The authors then finally discuss how to render XML documents more readable and pleasing for the viewer in the next chapter using the style languages CSS and XSL. The discussion is really interesting, for the authors dig a little deeper into the foundations of style languages. The discussion of style languages as rule-based languages is particularly illuminating.

The next chapter is very interesting and its inclusion is actually very surprising, namely a discussion of the Wireless Application Protocol. The authors give an introduction to the Wireless Markup Language and WMLScript. The book ends with four useful chapters on case studies for data duality, distributed applications, a book catalog information service, and SOAP.

There are many applications of XML in many different areas, such as CellML (proprietary) used in cell biology, CML (Chemical Markup Language) for molecular chemistry, IML (Instrument Markup Language) for control of laboratory equipment, BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language) for gene sequencing, and MathML for formatting of mathematical equations. I find XML an extremely powerful approach to information reporting and I am currently developing a package called NMML (Network Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in simulation and mathematical modeling of networks, and FMML (Financial Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in the modeling of financial instruments. This book, along with the W3C specifications, has been a tremendous help in the development of these applications.