List price: $14.95 (that's 30% off!)
These books are reasonable in content, but they cost far too much to justify their content. I've read other books which cut through the hammy and fluffy text and give me what I need to know. In fact, buying four books on Backoffice ranging from $30 to $50 offers exponentially more information from more diverse sources - and typically come with their own CDs as well. I could care less if they are "Microsoft biased or not" Que has a habit of hyping up products they cover and oddly they cover non-Microsoft products, too.
Lots of padding, and here's one reason why. The TCP/IP section is nice I suppose, but it's not teaching me anything as to how it relates to Backoffice so far. It's going into the history and how the numerology is structured (DNS, subnet mask, et cetera), but if I want to know about TCP/IP protocol theory, lots of books devoted to that [and in greater depth] exist. This book acts as if it wants to be a be-all solution, but has to cut content in some areas to make up for it.
It's no wonder that both books are included on CD in HTML format. I'm hoping that the other reviewer was wrong about his CD not including the goodies for both books. Unfortunately it makes sense as many a company will change a product's content and legally find ways to justify it.
If you're not Richie Rich or Bill Gates, go find and buy up to four books which would effective equal the ridiculous cost of this two-volume set. The Que set is nothing more than a [not quite] cheap attempt to acquire revenue by providing heaps of padding.
For the price, I'd look somewhere else for a BackOffice reference. (P.S. The included CD didn't come with all the books that the cover claimed it came with...)
Ronald Feintech, Ph.D.
List price: $13.95 (that's 20% off!)
Accompanying the perceptive, carefully researched text are 100 excellent illustrations, including rare photographs, floor plans, and renderings that document such important structures as Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis, along with his Masonic Temple, Reliance Building, and Marshall Field Wholesale Store in Chicago; the A.T. Stewart store in New York; the San Francisco Call Project; Wright's Larkin Building in Buffalo, New York, as well as his dazzling but never-constructed National Life Insurance Company project, Chicago, and St. Mark's Tower project, New York.
Architecture enthusiasts will find this comprehensive, authoritative study filled not only with an abundance of insights into the early development of the skyscraper but also with the ideas and influence of two master builders who played key roles in one of the most revolutionary developments in modern architecture.