This is the first volume in a collection of books on design criticism. The articles are pulled from sources like the Journal of the AIGA, Print, and EYE magazine. The topics range the "ugly aesthetic" to the state of design education. The articles are all decent none really stick out as undeserving of a place in this collection. Paul (IBM logo) Rand Contributes an interesting essay on what purpose logos really serve and Paula Scher talks about the way she runs her classes at SVA. The essays all provide some food for thought(even it the thought is " I'd like to smack this guy.")Buy it and keep it with you It's a good thing to have around while your waiting for a bus, a haircut, or a class to begin.

If you're a designer or visual communicator, this book is a must have for research, history, and critical insight. Throughful, provocative, and daring, Looking Closer gauges the role of design across social and cultural divides. Its articles are collected from magazines such as Graphis, Eye, Communication Arts, and the AIGA Journal. Furthermore, the book is cheaper than getting a subscription to those magazines!

A collection of essays from various magazines, designers and typographers provides the student with an unmissable reference guide. Excellent as it is not only an enjoyable, interesting read, but also fantastic for essay writing as it condenses a library of books into one small paperback. No student should be without this book!

Technically, Linux is the name for the operating system kernel at the heart of "Linux" distributions such as RedHat and Debian. When most people "use" Linux, they are in fact using the shell, the web server, or any other of the zillions of open source programs that (1) are available for, (2) are distributed with, or (3) can run atop the Linux kernel.

It used to be that there were only a few things you could do with a Linux box (namely run a Unix box as a web server) but the open source community has come a long way in providing (1) applications and (2) hardware support, so that you can now do a lot of things w/ your Linux box that used to only be doable on a Windoze box.

Schwarz et al have put together a smorgasbord of things you can do with your Linux box. These projects range from things you would tend to do on a Unix box (eg IP Masquerade, SSH, system security, even a chapter on writing Apache modules!) to stuff you would expect to need to do on a Windoze box (eg burning CDRs, syncing with Palm devices, and audio/MIDI/image/video processing).

The level of detail in the chapters (as well as the required level of Linux familiarity on the part of the reader) varies considerably -- a hazard of multiple authors and the breadth of the topics covered -- but each chapter starts off with a "Difficult-o-Meter" which more or less accurately states the level of Linux proficiency required.

That said, there are some real gems to be found in this book. There are some pretty hefty howto-like treatments in this book of topics such as system security, "undernets" (collaborative web sites), and setting up a web/IMAP/mail server.

There's a chapter on "Tools You Should Know", which lists the tools a typical Unix hacker should know: regular expressions, vi, dd, sed, diff, etc. Like some other parts of the book, this chapter doesn't give you a lot of information on these individual tools, but it brings them to your attention, so you at least know what to look for.

This book by itself won't turn a newbie into a Linux ninja after one reading, but it is a good overview of many different things that can be done with open source tools on a Linux box. I would highly encourage the prospective reader to take a look at the Table of Contents of this book. If you see a topic you're interested in, then this is a worthwhile book to buy. (I suspect that most folks running Linux at home at a beginner to intermediate level will find several bits of interest in this book.)

I've been curious about Linux for some time now. But, the only books that I could find, are all on installing, administering, configuring. Every one rehashing what the other said. None of them sold me on diving in.

When I discovered this book, I was apprehensive, but I went for it and purchased it. All I have to say is WOW! I never realised how flexible Linux is, or how much you could do.

I was thouroughly impressed on the variety of this book. I've finally been inspired to dive right in to Linux.

Are you a new Linux user, and want to learn more?

Are you an experienced Linux user, but are wondering what other interesting things you can do?

This book will teach you fun things. This book will teach you useful things. This book takes you on a tour you can't help but enjoy. At the end of the day, you'll find yourself not only entertained, but more knowledgeable about what you can do with Linux. It's probably more than you think!

This book helped me discover new interests and new possibilities, all in easy to read and entertaining prose. With that in mind, I'm giving this book the highest rating possible.

This book is a must have book, for those that want to do campaign s where you have mixed characters, or just want to give extra flavor to your stories. It about time White Wolf released a book to explain in cleaner detail, what really happened with the Tremere, what is all that brought them there, and how the Order of Hermes really feels about it. This is besides the point of making rules for the revenant, ghoul mages...

Using the framework of classic Greek drama for thefiction/metaplot parts, Cohen and DiPesa have put together the first compelling book of Mage's Revised Edition.

For some reason, even though he's listed on the cover, Mr. DiPesa gets no credit with Amazon. What is the deal with that?

Since the publication of Michael Doyle's piece on Liberalism and Democracy in 1983, the debate over the democratic piece has been one of the most vigorous in the field of International Relations. This volume includes all the major works on the subject, including Doyle's original piece, as well as his latest thinking. Also included are John Owen's perceptual explanation of the democratic piece, and David Spiro's brilliant quantitative critique of it. For those looking to understand the debate, it is clearly the best body of work yet in print. The only drawback is that the debate seems to be tapped out; there is little new to contribute, and some feel enough has been said already and we need to move in directions.

In essense, this is a response to the prior review. I agree with everything but the last line which I will paraphrase: what has been said has been said about the democratic peace proposition and theorists need to move on. The last chapter of this book, contributed by Michael Doyle, outlines future paths that research of the DPT can continue, and considering that the U.S. government emphasizes the development of democracy in many of its foreign policy endeavers, sometimes with out success, it is imperative that more work be continued. This collaboration of essays provides an excellent starting point understand the debate, but further analysis is continuing. If you are intersted in the DPT, DO NOT END HERE!

I found this book not only to be filled with the wonderfull works of Claude Monete but it also has a great insight to his life and the imprssion he left on modern art today. This book also contains full fold-out pictures of some of the artists best works. For anyone who has ever enjoyed any of Monets work you will love this book.

This book is a perfect addition to any art library. Having seen "Monet in the 20th Century" in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts, I was well prepared for the exhibit by having read the book first. I found the exhibit to be an extraordinary example of Monet's achievment in his later years. This book focuses on the works of Monet starting at the start of this century right up to his death in 1928. All through this period of Monet's life and including the representation of the body of work produced within those years, this book never skips a beat. Although not an all-encompassing look at his complete works of that period, this book offers the best look out there of his paintings as well as his development throughout the last quarter-century of his life. I found it to be in keeping with what is already known about Monet's later years, but certainly not devoid of interesting insights. The quality of the book, it's contents, including all of the color plates reproduced within is very good. I would not have an art library without Monet representation, and this is the ideal book for an addition or a starter.

MSXML4 is the fastest XML parser in the world and this book gives you needed details to take advantage of it. Some of these chapters are a gold mine. Some have obviously been sitting around from a couple years ago.
Please Wrox, stop it! I'll pay the same price to have the gold mine chapters alone.
Micheal Corning's chapter is filled with truly worthwhile stuff about the parser, coming as it does from Redmond. Danny Ayer's chapter on implement a XLink system is really brilliant and well written. Corning and Ayer show that you can be thoughtful and literate when writing about the specifics of a new technology.

The chapter on XPath is really incomplete to the point of not being an unusable reference. For the concat function we are given the example of concat('sku','562','B'). Now exactly why would anyone do this? Pointless examples do not help anyone. The concat function is almost always used for placing XML data with literal text. I use concat is creating URLs like this

.

With the contains function we are not told what happens if the second string is zero length. It always returns true, which seems pretty odd to me, which, in turn, makes it something worthwhile to mention.
Also, I don't see any mention of one of XPath's weirdest quirks. Namely, if a item in a filter evaluation is a nodelist, that XPath has uses an ANY semantics. That is too say

//product[@price>$Specials/@price]
gives us products that are more expensive than any of the specials.
The fault here is with the Wrox editors, not the authors. Chapters 9 10 and 11 are also great.
A very worthwhile, nay, essential book for Microsoft technology.

Alas, the book is already slightly out of date as MS has released MSXML4 SP1.
You will need to add
oXMLResp.setProperty("NewParser", True) to various places in the code

The book is very readable; I read half the book in one sitting and found that the flow from one topic to the next was very natural.

To start with this book covers pretty much all versions of MSXML, including older non standard features such as WD-xsl. Naturally there is more focus on the new standards, but examples and recommendations are given for all. One feature I very much appreciated was a list of versions that shipped various OS / Browser / Major Applications.

This book also scores highly as a lot of examples are giving in Jscript, but also includes examples in VB COM and VBScript.

With contributions from authorities in different aspects
of obstetrics and gynaecology, this book provides the
reader with excellent overview, ranging from the anatomy
of the pelvis (in this edition moved to an appendix),
to legal an moral aspects of the profession.

Each of the chapters are relatively easy to read, but the
coverage tends to vary in depth. It is clearly not the
intention of the authors to provide the reader with last
word on each topic, but ample references show the

way further. Statistical data, when provided, are up to
date and consistent with the quoted references.

I particularly liked the chapters on labor and delivery,
malpresentations and caesarians. A lot of chapters are
dedicated to pregnancies complicated by (maternal) pathologies
and there is even a chapter on neonatal care. Some of the
authors tend to "overdo it a bit" when fulminating against
unneccessary caesarians, but considering the incidence data
in America compaired to the rest of the developed world, they
do have a point.

I can recommend this book to anyone looking for an excellent
starter in obstetrics, but I tend to disagree with another
reviewer calling it "the Nelson (in pediatrics) for OB",
because it has much less the intention to be comprehensive.

Like Harrison's is for internal medicine and Nelson's for peds, so is Gabbe for OB. Anything you want to know about pregnancies and managing deliveries is in this book. It's a bit large to just sit down and read, but it makes a great reference book.

Este libro, escrito por conocedores de cada uno de los temas es una guia basica para la atencion de la paciente embarazada. Un libro que facilmente compila a varios.

Wow!Dog days of the West was a great book.I couldn't put it down. It was so exiting, the suspense of finding out who actualy owned The Oakdale Chronicle was fascinating.

I think this Wishbone book is better than others of its kind because the story plot is better written and the book is longer. It introduces more younger kids, now that Joe is going into 9th grade (same as myself). My favorite part in this book was when Wishbone found the deed with the winning hand! Another part I enjoyed was the story where Wishbone is Long Bill back into the Wild West Days. It has inspired me so much that I'm going to read books by O. Henry, because this Wishbone book was based on one of his books. I really enjoyed this book, and I'm in 8th grade!

This is a good book for kids who want to know the story of the book it is based on, Heart of the West. It also has another story worked into it, switching back and forth every two or three chapters. It is also funny, and has a small dictionary of unfamiliar words and phrases with their meanings. I highly recommened this book.

If you are an American, DON'T BUY this book. The author of this book "Mr.McGovern" decorates himself as "Father of Agile Outsourcing" supports selling our high tech jobs to foreigners and continue to import foreigners at the same time they are laying-off Americans.

I was suprised that a book published by Morgan Kaufman would be of such high quality and on a interesting topic until I saw this book in the bookstore. I was pleasantly suprised. Normally their books are overpriced relative to other publishers on the same topic.

Anywho, this book does justice to explain what one needs to understand about web services. It is targeted towards developers and architects but has some interesting concepts that are also applicable to project managers. They do a great job of explaining Service Oriented Architectures and how they are the foundation of web services.

This book should be on everyone's shelf.

I took the suggestion of another reviewer here and purchased a total ten copies from various online booksellers and distributed it to my direct reports so that they could develop a comprehensive understanding of how Web Services will work for solving IT issues we have been experiencing and to gain advantage over our competitors.

Coming from a non-technical background, I still felt that it added a lot of value to my understanding as to where we should be headed as an organization. This book does well in explaining concepts that I wouldn't have otherwise known about. The chapters on service oriented architectures, components and security considerations was an eye opener.

Didn't personally read the other chapters since I do not develop software but my staff tells me they are good as well. Organizations that are serious about web services would do well to buy this book for all members of their project team.

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.