Let us dispense with all of the discussion of the Illuminati, real Pharonic history or any serious sense of spirituality and enlightenment. This was a book of Science Fiction that used one of the most tumultuous periods in Egyptian history as its back drop. Part Stargate, part Star Trek, part Joseph Campbell, Blair may or may not have taken the view point that Egypt was the birthplace of all cultures and sciences on the globe. Akunaton does not deserve any criticism a historical piece or anthropological discussion as it is just a piece of fairly decent science fiction. However, while the author was taking poetic license with history and Egyptian spiritual concepts, it would have been nice if there had been development along those lines in order to round out and add richness to the scope of his vision. This book needed more character development, more interpersonal interaction between the characters, more description about the interior of the space ship Aton, more description about the every day life and description of the temples and the activities there in. The reader feels like a distant observer of a not too clear photograph, with glimpses of color here and there, with an occasional flash of brilliance. This book gives one the strange feeling that it suffered from an overzealous editor out of touch with the material and subject of the book. You can't help but wonder what was cut. Still, all in all, not a bad light read.

stop getting so caught up on the differences of race people. the book is about seedling planets, stairstep evolution and elevation of mental/spiritual levels. it is fiction. if you want to diliberate racism read roots. if your mind is on the return of life to the proper course after our fall from heaven, take a copy and break its back. drum and bass on the rise.

i can see that people either love this book or hate it. i personally loved it! i just got so sucked into the story that i couldn't help but to read on. i also believe that the story has some truth in it. it ties in with the illuminati and how the aliens have integrated in human history. of course, if you believe history that is told at school, this is gibberish. highly recommended for open-minded spiritual beings. love and light

I took Friedman's undergraduate Programming Languages course at Indiana University and though this book was the required text
Friedman used it sparingly, as did I. It's full of formal programming language theory and enough EBNF grammars to satisfy the purist while confusing the practioner. To Friedman's credit, he is realistic about the book's audience (graduate,doctoral, and post-doctoral) and about the prevalence of Scheme outside of academia.

The chapters on continuations and object oriented programming, however, are quite accessible and interesting reading. Though he doesn't do it much in the book, Friedman decoupled the course from Scheme several times and we examined everything from C's setjmp, longjmp mechanisms to C++'s virtual method lookup implementation.

Word of advice to those taking a course taught by Friedman: Don't miss a single lecture or you will be hopelessly lost.
Buy this book if you are interested in formal programming language theory. Don't buy this book if you are interested in learning a specific language or are put off by a dense, rigorous approach to learning programming languages. In any event, best
of luck with your studies.

This is a great book used in "The Theory of Programming Language" in Iowa State University. Although this book use Scheme to illustrate fundamental concepts of programming languages, I found out later that these concepts are especially useful in helping me to understand other language like Java. e.g. you can pass argument(s) to C++ fn either by value or by reference, in Java you're passing argument by copy-reference only(except primitive data tyeps). However, beware that there're lots of errors in this book, be sure to check out the publisher's web site and checkout a list of erranta.

I've used this book to teach an undergraduate programming language for 4 years now. I believe it to be the finest text in the area because of its approach to the subject. Many books in this area are what I call smorgasborg books--leading the reader through one language syntax after another without ever getting to what really matters: programming language operation. In EoPL, Freidman, Wand, and Haynes solve this problem by using a standard technique of computer science: using the right langauge for the job. In this case the job is progrmaming language operation and the language is Scheme. Don't be fooled into thinking you're learning Scheme--you're actually learning a great deal about programming languages along the way.

The book covers the operational semantics of the most important features in programming languages and give users a clear understanding of the infrastructure of programming langauges along the way. Highly recommended.

See http://lal.cs.byu.edu/cs330 for a course based on this book.

I echo the reviewers who called this series a poor LJ Smith knock-off. The plot is fairly interesting (the only shapeshifters series I've ever read), but the characters and their relationships are pathetically underdeveloped. Poor continuity, gigantic plotholes, and grammar errors... this series is a fun read, but an undeniable waste of time. A guilty pleasure at best.

I have enjoyed reading Zoe Daniel's books for some time now, but the books that caught my interest was the year of the cat trilogy. It was well written and it kept m attention and I like that in a book. It is very rare for me to find a book that gets me involvesd with the characters. Daniels gave his character real characteristcs with out straying aeway from the interestin part of the story. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this book and continue by reading the last two books of the trilogy.

This book is for you if you like suspense, things out of the ordinary and an unexpected twist of romance. When I read these books I feel like I'm part of the story and I'm able to see what it feels like to be different but yet belong to a group. This book is similar to the trilogy The Secret Circle by L. J. Smith. When I read the Secret Circle by L. J. Smith I didn't think I would find a similar book or series, but I have The Year of The Cat books by Zoe Daniels. So now both of these trilogy's are my absolute favorite

This is a good book, with plenty of information to become a true master of Java threads. You can also become a real wizkid of what not to do when programming threads. For the first 160 pages, there are few Java programs, and the ones that are there, mostly demonstrate wrong ways of doing things. This goes well in hand with the text, which contains plenty of don'ts.

The first part also contains a really good introduction to concepts and lays a good foundation for doing and understanding the programs in the latter 2 thirds of the book, however the rest of the book is well enough written, that it's possible to pick up pretty much anywhere.

Suggestion to future readers: Put every chapter into a thread, and schedule the thread to run, which you find most interesting to the task at hand.

This book is a must for any serious programmer who works with threads. The authors do a great job of explaining not only the basics, but also the most advanced topics in multithreaded programming. This includes advanced means of synchronization, differences between platforms, and an excellent discussion of performance issues. True, the book is not 100% about Java, but I certainly consider this a strength, not a weakness. This book is for those who want to understand what they are doing, and not just blindly follow some code examples. Great book, great achievement.

This book is a one of such books which you can keep as reference. This may not be a begineers book. This book gives clear picture of mapping of POSIX threads an Java API usage.

This book intial chapters covers background regarding the threads, and takes examples of varios flavours of unix. If any one read the book of "Thread Primer" from the same author they can skip intial chapters and can focus with respect to java.

From application programmers view this may be of too detail but ofcourse this will help them to understand the concept behind Java threads.

I gave 5 star because this is the only book gives the insight picture of Java threads and how it exploits the underlying OS.

This very slender book is based on the premise "what if an American battleship had escaped from Pearl Harbor during the attack and given chase to the Japanese fleet?" The writing is actually very good, and the naval dialogue is well-done. There are a number of typos, and a small line drawing of a scantily-clad woman appears a couple of times for some inexplicable reason. There are the obligatory sex scenes which are not explicit and which are well-written, but not very well staged, if that makes any sense. It's as if a sixteen year old, hormones raging, decided what would happen, and a novelist were commissioned to draft the text. The naval action is well-designed to camouflage some factual problems in the story, i.e. how does a 15-20 knots battleship succeed in catching a 30 knot carrier task force, or engaging it, but the books ends far too abruptly. In my opinion, what the book really needed was a far broader plot that (1) paid far more attention to the loss at Pearl as a motivating factor for revenge, and (2) ended the book with the battleship's return. The carnage at Pearl - even what the ship's crew could have seen as they exited the harbor before the second wave - should have been gone into a little more, and served as a white-hot motivating factor for getting revenge on the carriers. As written, the chase is a pretty cool, bloodless affair, and I really missed a good ending wrapping it up.

Looking for a good book to read this summer while you're lounging around the pool? Look no further if you're a fan of naval sagas. (This was my first.) At just over 200 small pages of large print, "On a Blood-Stained Sea" is an enjoyable read for a lazy afternoon, especially if you're tight with Evelyn Wood.

Mr. Houston has crafted his novella around an intriguing premise: What might happen if an American battleship had escaped the Japanese onslaught at Pearl harbor and then chased the Japanese fleet as they sailed home? Like the dog that chases a car down the street, the logical next question is what do the Americans do if they catch the Japanese fleet? For the answer you'll have to read the exciting, action-packed climax.

By the way, did I mention the gratuitous sex? Although the four female castaways presented an interesting dilemma to the crew, Mr. Houston could have played it more PG-13 than R. Speaking of which, all the ingredients are there for a better-than-average made-for-TV movie. But, don't wait for the movie - read the novel now.

There seems to be some confusion on how a twenty-knot U.S. Battleship could catch a thirty-knot Japanese Fleet after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I became interested in this scenario after reading "The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans," by Donald M. Goldstein & Katherine V. Dillon where I found evidence of the Japanese withdrawal to Kure Naval Base after the attack.

The Imperial Japanese Navy steamed north at twenty-six knots, to avoid the (remote) possibility of air attack, up to approximately forty degrees North latitude. Once in the clear they turned east and slowed to fourteen knots their ordinary cruising speed (to conserve fuel), sometimes slowing to nine knots due to heavy weather. Six oil-tankers accompanied the Japanese fleet and refueling, especially for their escorting destroyers, was an on-going concern. The fleet typically slowed to twelve knots for this maneuver which took most of the day, the Japanese didn't have alongside refueling as the U.S. fleet did, but the tanker dragged the oil-hose astern for the destroyers to pick up. So, the Japanese didn't steam home at thirty knots, it was more likely fourteen knots.

Their route home must also be considered, they did not steam straight for Japan, but went up and around Midway Island, again to avoid the possibility of air attack. So, while the Japanese took a circuitous route home at fourteen knots a U.S. battleship could, upon exiting Pearl Harbor after the attack, steam directly for a point some seven hundred miles north of Midway Island at twenty knots (this class of battleship had a cruising radius of 6,800 miles at that speed) and indeed make an interception, especially as it carried four scout planes.

Was this scenario likely? No, but it was possible. So, too, was the dawn attack that caught the Japanese completely by surprise, which was not at all improbable given that a confident victor was halfway home unmolested. It is entirely possible that they would drop their guard at that point.

The final question, once the battle commenced why wouldn't a thirty-knot Japanese fleet simply come up to speed and disappear over the horizon out running their twenty-knot opponent? Well, it takes time to work an aircraft carrier up to flank speed and if a battleship was within range it would only take a few minutes and a few sixteen-inch salvos to set it alight (this happened during the battle of Midway when Japanese carriers were dive bombed). Also, the Japanese night formation used in this attack was their actual steaming formation described in "The Pearl Harbor Papers." So, if you're interested, read the book.

Daniel L. Houston

....Because you'll never forgive him. Only a die-hard Spenser fan could keep reading after the first couple of chapters. To quote Hawk, "This is the silliest thing you ever got me involved in." (Whoops, I just blew the best moment in the book. Sorry.) The villains are one-dimensional to the point of being ridiculous. The clues are tasteless and dumb. Susan is at her most annoying - what DOES he see in her, except to love her for love's own sake, which is, quite frankly, getting tiresome. Makes me wonder what Parker's marriage is like. On the up-side, Hawk is even more refreshing than usual when he shows up to blow some humor into this stale story. But worst of all, Spenser is - horrors - just plain stupid in this one. Parker has avoided that in all the other books; even though you might not like the conclusion, at least you can't see it coming before savvy Spenser does. But this one? Good grief. It's vital to the plot that Spenser doesn't get it, but that's the only justification, and it's a terrible mistake for a great writer like Parker to make. Check it out at the library if you must; it's a quick read like all Parker books so it won't waste much of your time. But don't spend money on this one.

Let me state it clearly upfront -- I love Spenser. I also hold Hawk in high esteem. And Pearl never fails to charm me. I always consider time spent with these characters time well spent. I enjoyed the twists this plot took me on and appreciated that Spenser and Parker both respected the Asian/American community depicted here. HOWEVER, most of the female characters in this book were more than a little hard to like. Susan seems almost oblivious to the danger she perpetually puts her lover in. And, while I don't want to give too much of the plot away, let's just say that a lot of the story hinges on the selfish, shallow motives of women, as well. The misogyny of this work almost gave me the creeps. Of the new characters, DeSpain is the most intriguing.

Port City must be the most dreary place on planet Earth. I've never been there, but I feel like I have. Spenser somehow escaped pneumonia in this twisted thriller, not too mention being the #1 target of the Chinese mafia. This unusual story starts with a Greek theater director, who thinks he's being stalked. Then it takes off with murder, illegal immigration, and some whacky women. Spenser needs more help than Hawk can give him, so he finds a thug named Vinnie and a Chinese grad student to help him navigate through the streets of Port City in this curious adventure. The book reads well, and the plot twists keep you entertained. Robert Parker knows how to write a book that reads fast.

It was amusing to read the reviews which describe Lazare as a "socialist." Socialism, technically, means state ownership of the means of production, and/or the absence of private property. Needless to say, you will find neither in this book. It is also interesting to note how conservatives tend to use the pjorative term "mob rule" instead of the proper word, "democracy." God forbid that the rebellious rabble who comprise most of society actually rise up to demand a fair share of the American Pie.

In any case, Lazare's arguments are forceful and beyond dispute. What have our vaunted limited government and hallowed checks and balances brought us? Crumbling cities, reactionary civic religion, an explosively growing gap between rich and poor, political apathy, and cultural stagnation. Because the Constitution is so difficult to change, we have opted to let the economy do everything. The results of this political abdication are obvious. Citizens would not even know where to begin, would they ever want to actually assert their collective will to make society more humane by acting through their polity.

Investing an elected parliament with supreme federal power is actually to best way to make government more efficient, responsive to the people (I'm not part of a "mob," I'm part of We the People), and capable of ensuring our civil liberties. As we careen towards war in Mesopotamia, led by a shrubby dictator, our civil liberties are squashed at home without a peep from our nine supreme judicial protectors. This is "limited government" as the Founders intended? I'm with Lazare. Let's find a way to scrap our moldy old Constitution and put something in its place that actually embodies democracy. What are we afraid of?

Anyone who complains about the author's left-wing views, which are obvious, is pretty much missing the point of the book. Left vs. right is only one axis, orthogonal to and in many ways less significant than older distinctions - Whig/Tory, Court/Country, federalist/parliamentary, etc. What, you say? Those are old issues, no longer relevant today? In fact they are as important today as ever, and are infrequently discussed in the modern United States because only one approach to them is allowed by the Holy Constitution...and that's precisely Lazare's point.

According to Lazare, the Constitution and the religious awe in which it is often held (even to the extent of my feeling compelled to capitalize the word) form the straitjacket in which our current looney-bin government and culture are confined. He seems to feel particular hatred for the amendment clause, but this brings us to the major flaw in this book. Despite his claim that the barriers to amendment are too high, Lazare himself discusses examples (e.g. Prohibition) that might lead one to the opposite conclusion. Likewise, though he favors a strong unicameral legislature, his commentary on the conduct of House members hardly support his own argument. In the end, much of the essential message of the book is muddied and lost.

Despite these flaws, though, this book provokes thought on a variety of matters not limited to the form of government. Of particular interest is the way Lazare discusses the relationships between abstract concepts such as separation of powers or individual rights to very concrete concerns such as public-health policy and urban sprawl. While his leftist tendencies do become annoyingly apparent in the later chapters, the attempt to tie everything together is laudable. Even if you disagree vehemently with all of Lazare's views, including the central thesis, the book is well worth reading in the spirit of broad intellectual exploration.

This is an intelligent, reasonable exploration of the problems with the American governmental system. It is certainly not perfect; any effort so ambitious that it tries to cover the history of Constitutional governments for the last 600 years is bound to overreach. But Lazare does a nice job of producing a readable, rational hypothesis as to what's ailing the USA and of suggesting some solutions. The simple fact is that what the written Constitution says and what our government do are barely related. Lawyers take an entire class in law school studying the contradictions and hypocracies currently involved in Constitutional law. We lawyers learn how to use the current law to win cases and to argue our client's positions, but no one ever steps back and looks at the system as a whole and says, "hey, this needs to be fixed, it's not working anymore!"

Lazare in this book tries to give some reasons and make some suggestions. Most people will find his suggested response to the problems -- eliminating the Constitution and its checks and balances -- too radical. But those of us who are paying attention to our world are glad that someone is learning from history, and is attempting to raise the level of political discourse in this nation above the mindless level of the current political debates. ("I'm a real reformer!" "No, he's a Washington insider -- I'm a real reformer! I was only in Washington when Dad was acting as President!" "Even though I've been Vice-President for the past eight years, I'm really an outsider who's all for reform...!")

Real reform might have to jettison the entire system.

Although I have not used/read any other physics books dedicated exclusively to thermal physics, I can only assume that those out there have to be better than Schroeder's.

The book is not "An Introduction," nor is it an advanced approach to thermal physics. Being so, it's an intermediate approach to the subject at hand. And that, is the problem with the book.

Being a sophomores and non-physics major in physics, "getting use" the concepts and ideas in physics may take times. This means I need a clear and ordered outline of each subject in physics and assurance from my instructors and the books that I am using.

However, with Schroeder's book, I'm thrown into chaos and frustration. First, the author chooses not to have practice problems or ones with answers in the back. This is horrible for an "intro" book. Sometimes I'm left with doubts about my answers and reasonings behind them: Am I taking this or that into account? Can I apply this equation to this system? Having some means of assuring the student with a budding interests in physics would be nice. Not everyone can make it office hours.

His expanations are good, but this problems are horrible ( Mathematics is not the problem). Chapter 1 was supposed to be a review, but the problems are not. I had to use Tipler's "Physics for Scientists and Engineers" and an old physical chemistry book to get me through. The problems that are presented are either too easy (plug-n-chug) or too difficult, but slim on anything in between. The worst ones are the ones that ask you estimate or assume this or that. Yes, it's great for developing a habit to critical think, but often it is just one or two hours aimlessly of getting nowhere, all to find out the next day that the answer could be easily derived in just a few steps.

I've never given a 5 for anything. But this is pretty darn good for a first edition book. At my university we are without the benefit of an actual text and must resort to a booklet written by our instructor who seemingly feels his book is superior to any others. But this book is fantastic because it starts with the basics. I think this is great for any undergrad. Only 1 year of intro physics and 1 year of calculus needed to finish this book. My only gripe like the oher guy. No answers to the questions! NONE. Not even the odd questions. Needs more example problems and a chapter summary would be nice. The author needs to remember most of us are coming from Halliday, Resnick, Walker and are very used to their format. Good topic selection too. I hope we adopt this book at my department.

Schroeder sets the mark for readability with this undergraduate physics text. This was my favorite among all my undergraduate texts; by far the easiest to understand and most enjoyable to read. His explanations are clever and witty. I enjoyed his lucid introduction to combinatorics in statistical mechanics. Schroeder gets an A+ in defining abstract ideas such as enthalpy, partition functions, and intensive vs. extensive quantities. On the flip side, the organization is loose, and there aren't enough worked out examples in the latter chapters. I highly recommend this book to professors who want students to actually read and learn from the text.

I have to say that I generally disagree with the mostly positive reviews about this book. This book was written by 8 different people, and it cleary shows. The chapters do not follow a clear progression, and techniques discussed in one chapter are ineffectively carried over to the next.

The book also has a bizzare and haphazard arrangement of topics (For example: there is a chapter introducing Visual Studio.NET inexplicably placed towards the end of the book)

Overall the book tries to cover too many fringe topics without spending enough time on the basics of server controls needed to form a solid foundation.

For the price you may expect twice the book (a tad over 400 pages is small in tech books terms), but don't be fooled, the content of this book is very rich and much of it is hard to come by otherwise. Unless you enjoy spending hours digging though the msdn and Microsoft newsgroups, this book is for you!

As with many of the newer Wrox titles, this one is organized more like a collection of articles. This format has been the cause of many bad reviews, and while I don't care for the article approach most of the time, on Pro ASP.NET Server Controls... it works quite well. I bought the book with a specific task in mind, I needed to create a unique custom control that had multiple child controls inside of it, my only previous knowledge of server controls was what I had from the Professional ASP.NET book (which equates to about a chapter of this book) the material found in the Pro ASP.NET book left me with more questions than answers and I needed something to help me really understand what goes on inside and out of a web server control and how to integrate properly with the .NET Framework, with this book I achieved that goal within three hours of reading and experimenting, it truely was a life saver for helping meet one of our milestones.

So why only four stars? Well, as others have pointed out, the book isn't perfect, I did have to use the VS.NET on-line help to lookup how to generate client-side script for postback events, better examples could have been provided, but overall it's very good.

There are a lot of technical books these days that seem like a real waste of time and money, arent' there? This one isn't like that. The authors don't waste your time with an introduction to ASPX or C#, don't bore you with the basics of programming, or anything like that. Instead they give you a focused, on-topic description of the topic. The examples are good, the prose clear and concise, and the chapters broken down well.

Another plus is that they tend to stay editor-agnostic. Aside from a few comments (and one full chapter) on Visual Studio.net, everything else can be followed using Notepad. The Visual Studio chapter is pretty good, too.

I can't say it enough -- if you've got to build controls, you've got to get this book. Get it now. (No, I'm not one of the authors!)

The reader of this book has to slog through such Emme "hardships" as her being an athlete, living abroad, dating, going to college, getting married, and becoming a top plus size model (she was signed to an agency the minute she walked in the door). If you can identify with all of that, you probably don't read or need a self-help book in the first place.

Bottom line: She's overweight and happy, but she is paid very well to stay that way. Unless you too are greatly rewarded for your "difference" (whatever that may be), it's nearly impossible to identify with her advice, her life, or her story.

UPDATE: I think the point of rating/reviewing books here is to help other readers make buying decisions. We all have different opinions. I don't understand why some readers get upset with other readers simply because they didn't feel the same way about a book. I didn't "miss the point" of this particular book as another reader suggested. I have been through more than Emme EVER will and I was looking for inspiration, not fluff.

The last reviewer clearly missed the point, and somehow lives in the fantasy that growing up with a difficult step-father, living abroad, going to college and coping with ultra-competitive modeling world is easy as pie. That such life experiences might affect issues of self esteem and size acceptance is entirely reasonable, and that Emme is willing to open up and share them is to be applauded. If you want to wallow in self pity and are convinced that those who are famous, wealthy or somehow seem more priveleged than yourself lead perfect lives and are not confronted with these issues, than I doubt any self-help book is meant for you. Emme generously draws on her personal experiences and shows us that it is possible to rise above such negative issues and learn to both love yourself and thrive in this world. Oh and yes - you certainly CAN be fit and healthy in a larger body. A size 2 who eats junk food and sits around watching television is a good deal less healthy than a size 16 who is athletic and eats lots of fruits and veggies. Health is not in the weight. It is in the lifestyle choices! But if you don't like yourself very much this is a very hard thing to accomplish. Emme's message is right on the money.

Well, I actually got the book in a second hand bookstore for 5 dollars. I guess what surprised me is how it was in such good condition, my guess is maybe the previous owner didn't get the message. But I sure did, this book rocked! I loved everything about it. I can't relate to emme's childhood, my weight didn't become an issue until my teens. But I did relate to the fact she struggled in love and in her work. I have been inspired also to look into plus size modelling. Emme proves that women should be true to themselves, and not fit to anyone else's standards.