Written in 1854 and published the next year,this book is fascinating in providing personal sketches of distinguished Americans Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson,Henry Clay and John Randolph with many references to other prominent men who were their contemporaries. The author's
analysis is interesting not only in the spirited description of the individuals profiled but in his comparison of each of them with their political antagonists. The unique perspective he brings a man whose life overlapped some of these figures is worth a read for history or politics buffs. His admiration and defense of some he buttresses with argument. His passion is clear.
His oratorical style is typical of the time yet conveys a vivid impression of his subjects, and reminds one of a time before soundbites and simple words geared to a mass audience.

This book really gives the reader a sense of what Hamilton and Jefferson were REALLY like. They had disputes and were mistrustful of eachother. There wasn't any school-boy stuff going on here. I recommend this book if you're interested in history and are in college. Good book!

The Vinland Map purports to be a 15th century map depicting Vikingexploration of North America centuries before Columbus. If genuine,the Vinland map is one of the great documents of Westerncivilization; if fake, it's an astoundingly clever forgery and Yale University has egg on its face. The first edition of the book in question, The Vinland Map and Tartar Relation, announced the discovery to the world in 1965. To commemorate the thirtieth anniversary, YUP published a second edition, adding a few new essays in support of the map's authenticity.

Of the controversy over its authenticity little more can be said in this review. The book itself covers some of the important objections (e.g. the presence of titanium in the ink), but slights or ignores much of the philological and historical criticism of recent years. (The web contains a certain amount of such criticism.) Lay readers may come away with the impression that the academic world is solidly behind the map, although this is far from the case.

Nevertheless, if you're interested in the Vinland Map this is the one essential book to own. It includes high-quality black and white plates of the map, together with text and translation of the legends and suchnot. The map was at one point bound with a manuscript known as the Tartar Relation (Historia Tartorum), itself a fascinating specimen of medieval geographical knowledge. As the circumstances of its production and replication are critical to the authenticity of the map, a full text and translation is also included.

China continues to change at a hair-raising pace so I can almost forgive the fact that Lonely Planet can't seem to keep up. Except that it should be able to catch up after three editions yet somehow manages to lag behind even that schedule.

I can't forgive at all the snarky attitude of its writers who seem to operate on the principle, "if you don't have anything nice to say, try at least to make it sound witty and superior." The result is usually smug cynicism, which is an unattractive attitude in a traveller, and all the more trying when all you really want to do is find the hotel after 36 hours in hard class. Sometimes I get the feeling these guys don't really like to travel...

Rather than simply being obsolete, or imprecise as another reviewer notes, Lonely Planet is often simply inaccurate. How do they do it? I'm not sure. I've had reports that the underpaid and tightly itineraried writers can't always complete their assignments and sometimes rely on second-hand information from other travellers. I've met a German guidebook writer (not lonely planet) who admitted she'd done the same, so it's not all that far-fetched.

China can be a frustrating country for budget travellers, particularly those with no other option than train or bus on long journeys. Not much english is spoken, even in the major cities and the whole country appears to operate under alien premises. (These happen to be two of the best reasons to travel there.) However, outdated, imprecise and inaccurate guidebooks just exacerbate the potential frustrations.

There are better guidebooks. Consider titles in the Cadogan Guide series, particularly "China: The Silk Routes" by Peter Neville-Hadley. Read the editorial and customer reviews on its Amazon page, which are bang on.

Oh, by the way, I took one star off for inaccuracy and two for being unpleasant. China's a tough assignment but it's no reason to get nasty.

i would have to agree with the negative reviews i've seen, and also the majority of travelers i have met in china. we all carry around the lp "bible", but also agree that it is one of the worst publications they have. it seems as you travel along that maybe lonely planet has not visited china or the places it talks about in a while. unfortunately it is one of the only publications of its type and it does contain a minimum of information that one may find useful at times. most of the informatino is outdated, even though i'm using the 2003 edition. Not to mention that they add the poorly written humor instead of a little more chinese script, which let me tell you goes a long way in a country where once you're out of the main cities, very few people speak english, and when they do it is not the best. some more useful word and phrases would be great, instead of how to say "eel fried with spinach and mushrooms". just the words for muchrooms, noodles, and rice would be nice, instead of forcing you to buy the mandarin phrase book, just to get the basics. another complaint i would have is in the compactnes. i realize this is a large country, but i feel like a lot of the space dedicated to useless information and adveritisments that you can't ever remove (for more lp bibles...) could be put to some much better use. All in all i have to say that while containing some very useful information, you're much better off photocopying the important pages and leaving the book at home.

My friend and I have been in China two times: each for 3 weeks. LP was one of the guidebooks we used throughout. The first trip was to the South (up to Lijiang in Yunan) and the second was to the west (up to Turpan). Both trips planted in us rewarding experiences and beautiful memories. We wanted to go to Tibet, but we had no enough time (by bus, it already would have taken 3 days to Lhasa from Qinghai).

While reading some of the reviews on this page, IMHO, I think that if you'd like to learn more about history of China or language, you should buy history books or some sort. LP mainly serves as a "survival" guide. If you ever are in China, you will know how much "survival" means to you.

About inaccuacies in this book, you should keep in mind that China is still a changing country. Everthing was so unpredictable. But that's actually one of the things that makes China so fascinating to travel in. Nevertheless, I found that the info was as much accurate as it could be. For example, in Beijing, you can follow the direction in the book to get the cheapest money exchange rate (a laundry shop in an alley was actually there!).

If you're planning to spend time in China on your own, I highly recommend this book. You also need one or two good phrase books, if you don't know about Chinese. If you are also interested in historical part of China, also bring with you a good history book. But I doubt it, for the following reasons: 1) the experiences, sceneries, people, etc. will make you forget about history, and 2) they are all to heavy to carry. Imagine you are loading your backpack on your back walking and looking for a place to sleep, or on a bus with a map in one hand. I wouldn't carry a lot of books.

I have found so many intersting people travelling in deep China, most of them from European countries. They all carry this Bible with them.

If you're traveling in places like China, I advise you have a special home-made wallet that sits between the innest shirt and your skin, or inside the underwear. You should keep all your important documents and money in this wallet.

This is an enormously satisfying book, one that goes farther to rescue Aaron Burr from an undeserved historical contempt than any book since Gore Vida1's elegant fiction BURR. It is still a reflex to dismiss Thomas Jefferson's first Vice-President as a sly scheming traitor who murdered the well-beloved Hamilton in a one-sided duel where Hamilton deliberately and romantically threw away his shot.. It is all thoughtless and unscrutinized balderdash, and Kennedy has a wonderful time proving it. There are surprising and provocative ideas on every page, and fascinating portraits of the brilliant neurotic Hamilton, and the almost perfect hypocrisy and subtle genius of Thomas Jefferson. Most of all, however, is the picture Kennedy draws of the witty, graceful gentleman who was Aaron Burr. Kennedy call him America's first professional politician, but he was far more than that(and if he was that, what was Jefferson?) To say that he was an abolitionist and a feminist does not really do him justice; he practiced what he preached, as Kennedy amply describes, fifty, even a hundred, even two hundred years ahead of his time. His generosity was outsized, his intellect keen, without cant or self-delusion. A scion of one of the colonies first and oldest familes, he was an honest to God Revolutionary War hero not once but many times, (unlike The Sage of Monticello, to say the least). Like Jane Austen's Gentleman, Burr never apologized and never explained. This last was a grievous mistake, because his silence, to his contemporaries and to posterity, though elegant, ceded much ground to his enemies. Much of Burr's abolitionist activity was done in association with Alexander Hamilton, whose anti-slavery views were grounded in his youth in the West Indies, where he could see slavery and its affect close up. There was much to admire in both of these men, and their contemporaries did so. But Hamilton carried a molten envy of Burr for many years, years during which Burr apparently had not a clue that his friend-rival-ally-competitor was viciously and continuously slandering him, sharing opinions about Burr that went beyond the norm of political rivalry, making certain that Burr would not succeed in politics even if it meant that Jefferson whom he despised, would. But Burr was more than Hamilton1s opponent; he was the man who, in almost every respect, from military heroism to family background to manners to wit to success with the ladies, Hamilton yearned to be. And everything Hamilton hated in himself, argues Kennedy, he projected on to Burr. And then there is Jefferson. It has become open season on Jefferson these last few years, and high time too. Jefferson's undoubted brilliance as a literary stylist and his extraordinary ability as a practical and cunning politician have kept him at the top of the heap for decade after decade, but much of that vaunted reputation The Great Democrat, or The Great Commoner, or the Great Something or Other, does not hold up under close scrutiny. Jefferson knew when to flatter, and when to betray, as when he broke his oath to Burr in 1800 and bargained for the Presidency. He wrote the undying phrase that all men are created equal, and then strangled the L'Ourverture Revolution in Haiti because he was terrified of black sovereignty. Kennedy is wonderful in discerning plausible motives to Jefferson's unquenchable need to destroy Burr, a man who might very well have moved up abolitions' cause by 50 years. The various accounts of back room snakiness by The Sage, and the description of the similarity between Jefferson's Western machinations both before and after Burr's trial for treason for the same activities(which Jefferson pushed with a Shakespearean malignity) are priceless. There are greater tragedies in America's past, I suppose, than the consignment of Aaron Burr to the Most Reviled Villain Category, but it feels terribly unjust. And the easy and even glib way many of our teachers and historians wave airy hands of dismissal in Burr's direction does rankle however, to say nothing of the ongoing worship of The Sage, also airy, also unscrutinized. Roger Kennedy has created a thoughtful, witty, outraged response to all that.

Roger Kennedy freely acknowledges at the beginning of this study that he has a point of view: Aaron Burr had a greater character and value to our nation than his reputation provides, while Hamilton and Jefferson had lesser character and value to our nation than their reputations. This book is a clear and concise defense of Aaron Burr, amply annotated, easily read, and quite entertaining. On a larger scale, the study gives reason to contemplate the formulation of reputation, especially historically. Had not Burr's daughter perished at sea with all his notes and letters, we might have a much greater opinion of Burr. Any fair reader of this book will come to a much deeper appreciation for Burr, the man, and the failures and shortcomings of Hamilton and Jefferson. I highly commend this book to your attention.

This is an enormously satisfying book, one that goes farther to rescue Aaron Burr from an undeserved historical contempt than any book since Gore Vidal's elegant fiction BURR. It is still a reflex to dismiss Thomas Jefferson1s first Vice-President as a sly scheming traitor who murdered the well-beloved Hamilton in a one-sided duel where Hamilton deliberately and romantically threw away his shot.. It is all thoughtless and unscrutinized balderdash, and Kennedy has a wonderful time proving it. There are surprising and provocative ideas on every page, and fascinating portraits of the brilliant neurotic Hamilton, and the almost perfect hypocrisy and subtle genius of Thomas Jefferson. Most of all, however, is the picture Kennedy draws of the witty, graceful gentleman who was Aaron Burr. Kennedy calls him America's first professional politician, but he was far more than that. To say that he was an abolitionist or a feminist does not really do him justice; he practiced what he preached, as Kennedy amply describes, fifty, even a hundred, even two hundred years ahead of his time. His generosity was outsized, his intellect without cant or self-delusion. A scion of one of the colonies first and oldest familes, he was an honest to God Revolutionary War hero not once but many times, (unlike The Sage of Monticello, to say the least). Like Jane Austen's Gentleman, Burr never apologized and never explained. This last was a grievous mistake, because his silence, to his contemporaries and to posterity, though elegant, ceded much ground to his enemies. There was much to admire in both Hamilton and Burr, and their contemporaries did so. But Hamilton carried molten envy of Burr for many years, years during which Burr apparently had not a clue that his friend-rival-ally-competitor was viciously and continuously slandering him, sharing opinions about Burr that went beyond the norm of political rivalry, making certain that Burr would not succeed in politics even if it meant that Jefferson whom he despised, would. But Kennedy suggests that Burr was more than Hamilton's opponent; he was the man who, in almost every respect, from military heroism to family background to manners to wit to success with the ladies, Hamilton yearned to be. And everything Hamilton hated in himself, argues Kennedy, he projected on to Burr. And then there is Jefferson. It has become open season on Jefferson these last few years, and high time too. Jefferson's undoubted brilliance as a literary stylist and his extraordinary ability as a practical and cunning politician have kept him at the top of the heap for decade after decade, but perhaps there is less here than meets the eye. Kennedy is wonderful in discerning plausible motives to Jefferson's unquenchable need to destroy Burr, a man who might very well have moved up abolition1s cause by 50 years. The various accounts of back room snakiness by The Sage, and the similarity between Jefferson1s Western machinations both before and after Burr's trial for treason for the same activities(which Jefferson pushed with a Shakespearean malignity) are priceless. There are greater tragedies in American's past, I suppose, than the consignment of Aaron Burr to the Most Reviled Villain Category, but it feels terribly unjust. And the easy unscrutinized way many of our teachers and historians wave airy hands of dismissal does rankle, to say nothing of the ongoing worship of The Sage, also airy, also unscrutinized. Roger Kennedy has created a thoughtful, witty, outraged response to all that.

Behind David Lean's directorial masterpiece 'Lawrence of Arabia' (1962) lay a series of attempts to film T. E. Lawrence's life, most of them centred around the abridged version of 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', known as 'Revolt in the Desert.' Chief amongst the filmmakers eager to produce this epic was the great Alexander Korda, who bought the rights to both books and also to several biographies that contained their material. Korda was asked by Lawrence himself not to make the film while he was alive. Five months later, Lawrence was killed in a motorbike accident and Korda began his preparations. Locations were scouted, scripts were drafted, and several actors were tested to play the lead. Walter Hudd (who had played the Lawrence-based character Private Meek in 'Too True to be Good') and Leslie Howard were the favourites, although Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier were also considered. The Foreign Office thwarted Korda at every turn, protesting that it would be ill advised to show the Turks in an unfavourable light with the ongoing political unrest in the East. After a dozen attempts to make the film, Korda let it slide. This book is tripartite: part one sketches a brief history of the attempts to film 'Lawrence of Arabia' and includes pictures of all the key players. The second part is an interview given by Leslie Howard on how he would play Lawrence; and thirdly, the final script (1938) of the Korda epic is reproduced. While it is a laudable piece of work, the book fails to hang together and emerges as two articles and a film script that are linked by the same subject, but have no cohesion. Part One is far too brief for the reader to gain an understanding of the forces arrayed against Korda and his project, and it would benefit from more research and more expansion on the views of the various directors and actors engaged for the film in its different stages. Part Two is simply the Howard interview with no editorial comment offered. Part Three, the script, also has no analysis. This is surprising, as it is rich in allusion and with peculiar sequences that (to modern eyes) detract from the overall pacing of the film. It relies heavily on 'Seven Pillars' for dialogue and description, with little or no modification. To those who are acquainted with the Robert Bolt script of the Lean film, the Korda Lawrence is but a pale shadow: eloquent passivity rather than "nothing is written" man of action; cold detachment rather than anger and angst in crucial scenes (Tafileh, the Turkish hospital); the smug imperialist rather than the tortured anti-imperialist. Korda's Lawrence was intended to be heroic, a ( ) puff-piece with a serious bite, but looking at the script today, he seems shallow, self-important and obnoxious. The real Lawrence evaded any attempt to capture him by constant shifts in personality, presenting a different face to each person he met. It would appear that the celluloid Lawrence of Korda's vision was the same; and, as such, defeated him wholly.

This book was recently discussed alongside Fuller's much more interesting "Thomas Kuhn" and Kuhn's own "The Road since Structure" in the New York Times as part of the current Kuhn-mania (July 21, 2001). Bird is a good textbook writer, and the book succeeds in domesticating Kuhn's intellectual project for mainstream, rather unimaginative philosophers. Without any disrespect intended, is there really much to be gained by trying to show why Kuhn was really an "empiricist" and not the "naturalist" that he should have been (according to Bird) -- especially if in the next breath you're also claiming that Kuhn wasn't really a philosopher, when it got down to it (which Bird claims)? I know there are philosophers who are used to this way of doing business, but it leaves the reader with a rather impoverished, though adequate, view of Kuhn.

This VHDL book is targeted more to the VHDL beginners. It contains a quite good html-based VHDL workshop and the VHDL '93 online reference. It covers only a little bit the new emerging analog mixed-signal extension to VHDL which is called VHDL-AMS. The VHDL-AMS chapter was very disappointing to me.

If you are looking for a book about VHDL-AMS you're better off with the following book:

"The DESIGNER'S GUIDE TO ANALOG & MIXED-SIGNAL MODELING" "Illustrated with VHDL-AMS and MAST"

Author: Scott Cooper (Avant! Corporation)

I found this book a very poor effort. This is neither a hands-on approach or a practical approach. It is full of waffle and I get the impression that the authors were not really sure of the subject they wrote about. I look forward to the book that Gareth M. De Bruyn will write on R/3 & the Internet !

This is a very one sided and very SAP-oriented book, but it will give you an indication of the SAP-blessed way of doing things. Just be aware there are lots of falsehoods and generalizations, e.g. "mainframes cannot connect to the internet.", when one of the first successful things of the internet was LISTSERVs from the IBM VM operating system long before SAP could even pronounce let alone spell internet. Like most SAP stuff it pats SAP liberally on the back and paints themselves as the conveyers of "THE TRUTH". If you read it with a critical eye and believe about one half it is a good book and at the very least when people start slinging the buzzwords which is a favourite pastime in the SAP world you will be able to accurately gauge there knowledge.

I am using this book as one of my required textbooks this quarter at the University of Washington. As indicated by the title of the book, the focus of the book is on how current SAP R/3 users can make R/3's functions available over the Internet. The authors have not attempted to explain similar efforts by the other major ERP vendors.

As a professor, my choices of books and of ERP systems have been easy. SAP has provided its R/3 system to more than 70 American universities and to more than 350 universities worldwide. Only recently did J.D. Edwards start a grant program for universities. Anyone may search amazon.com's database and discover that there are very few books available on any aspect of the other ERP systems. The authors of this book should be applauded for writing an excellent book for use in universities.

As a professor, I expect authors to provide a theoretical framework in the first chapter. These authors passed my test by covering basic concepts of the extended supply chain in the first chapter. Systems developers need to understand why they are developing a new system and how to evaluate the success or failure of the new system. The authors have not provided a step-by-step guide for developers and for programmers. Readers will not find a CD-ROM at the back of the book. Instead, the authors have explained what you need to know about SAP R/3 and about the Internet to make them work together.

The authors discussed centralized, loosely coupled, and decentralized systems. A correct representation of the views of the authors about the use of mainframe computers may be found on page 18: "There is one exception: mainframe systems, such as those used in many large enterprises, for example insurance companies. Terminals attached to these systems cannot accept the client software required for the Internet." The authors understand the difference between a mainframe computer and a terminal.

For an opposing view, I require my students to read Andrew White's white paper: "The Value Equation: Value Chain Management, Collaboration and the Internet." This white paper explains why Logility, Inc. has taken a different approach to extended supply chain management than that taken by the ERP system vendors. You may find the white paper at the Collaboration Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment site: http://www.cpfr.org/

My students must read also the excellent materials you may find at the Web sites of RosettaNet and of the Uniform Code Council: http://www.rosettanet.org/ http://www.uc-council.org/

In sum, this is a good, introductory book for SAP R/3 users who want to provide R/3's functions over the Internet. There are already entire books on supply chain management and on the Internet. This book provides a good starting point for understanding how to combine SAP R/3 and the Internet. Someday, perhaps other vendors will find the courage to provide their systems and books for critical evaluation and use in universities. I am still waiting for other reviewers to cite better books.

An Internet Bubble Product!

If you invested in a DOT COM company in 1999 and you did not sell your stocks on time, you may have lost 99% of your money. If you bought this book (published in 1999), you probably lost all your money, because the book is really, really H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E.

1.The book title is "Professional Java XML Programming with Servlets and JSP" but you will neither learn XML nor Servlets/JSPs. Wrox publication tried to place it in the XML space but there is no so much XML to learn about... The book contains 772 pages but only 185 pages discuss XML. The authors were busy discussing Servlets, JDBC, XSLT XHTML etc... I was looking in the Index section, maybe I could find a good Home Insurance, as well...

2.Strategically, the book discusses two main XML parsers, DOM and SAX. Unfortunately, the authors chose to dedicate a larger portion of their discussion to the SAX parser. Most companies are using the DOM parser because of its extended capabilities, such as the ability to store tag data in a tree structure, provides better searching and better performance. The SAX parser is flat and lacks such capabilities.

The Internet Bubble created an inflation of bad books. I hope that in the future, publishers would put more attention to quality rather than to quantity.

This book is outstanding. It is an extremely relevant and informative guide to some of the most current technologies that I am interested in.

The audience for this book is well - targeted. This is not a book for beginning java programmers. This is a book for professionals who have invested a substantial amount of time not only in Java, but in the more core studies of Computer Science.

The first several chapters concentrate on building a base of understanding for the rest of the book. The drive to develop n-tier applications is discussed with a detailed focus on the classic three - tier architecture. The shortcomings of common implementations are outlined, and the authors clearly define the source of the problem ... a lack of flexibility in design and implementation. The solution? Could it be XML? Well, XML and various supporting technologies (thus the title of the book).

Before delving into the world of the web, the authors take a chapter to fully explain the concepts of languages, grammars and parsing. This chapter could be skipped, but it could help prevent future design disasters that are so commonly associated with a lack of understanding of formal cfg and csg rules.

Four chapters are dedicated to the introduction and explanation of XML. These chapters outline the components of XML in a slightly odd order, but contain information essential to the understanding of the later chapters in the book.

The authors create a 'mini-language' as an example in one chapter, and I was not very impressed or interested in it, and found it to be of little value, other than to provide exercise using the XML concepts that had already been presented.

There is an appendix that summarizes the syntax of JSP, and I thought that the inclusion of the JSDK, JavaMail and JAF api's was a good thing, primarily because they are extension packages, but I didn't really see the need for the JDBC api to be included.

The remainder of the book is excellent, the JSP chapter is devoid of XML except to mention that JSP 1.x - compliant processors are required to accept JSP pages in XML syntax. This chapter was of more value to me than several tutorials, and entire books on JSP that I have read.

Using the code examples is a snap, assuming you are already familiar with basic java concepts, There is a detailed appendix on HTTP headers, and server response codes, which is helpful to know when just starting to program server-based applications.

For those who prefer to see the application of the technology, Chapter 11 and 12 outline a complete application that incorporates JSP, JavaMail and XML (with a few other resources).

To wrap it up, Chapter 13 covers XSLT and XPath, these are evolving technologies which are extremely powerful, and they are not even fully developed yet! This chapter uses the XML capabilities of IE5, and you should have it installed on the system you use to test their examples. The examples in this chapter are some of the most advanced and well laid out that i have seen. They even present a solution to the classic 8 Queens puzzle using only XSL, although they do warn us that this is an example of what not to do with XSLT, it is a great illustration of what can be done with it.

Again and again, the authors return to the architectural concept of using XML as a means of extending the flexibility of an application. This is a forward-looking book. That is to say that the authors are not afraid to envision the future use, applications, and capabilities that XML appears to be driving towards.

I would recommend this book for developers who are starting to develop distributed systems, up to those who have extensive experience with distributed applications and want to learn about XML as a tool for making more flexible distributed systems.

This book will be on my desk, within easy reach, for a long time...it should be on yours as well.

I love this book but obviously it is not for novice.