David Toma was the person the TV show Baretta was based on, but Baretta didn't have the same love or passion as Toma. (There was a predecessor show to Baretta called Toma, a more accurate portrayal.)

About half the book is an autobiography, and the other half is filled with information about marijuana, its dangers, and personal stories of teenagers Toma knew. Toma is very passionate, and the writing style reflects how he probably spoke in the hundreds of high schools he spoke to, with passion. It's not a dry read, but very personal and passionate.

At the same time, he has a very blunt style, reminding me of Michael Savage, and lays it out, the lies of society, psychologists, and other professionals.

If your teenager is a regular user of pot, and is willing to be helped, BE CAREFUL who you take them to for help, because many, many psychologists and therapists DO NOT take the effects of marijuana seriously. If the profession has changed, and does take it seriously now, it's probably due to this guy, who campaigned tirelessly in the 60s and 70s.

I would love to have David Toma to dinner.

David Toma speaks with honesty, passion and compassion to young people and parents about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. It is not a harmless pastime as some would have you believe. Drugs and alcohol are an insidious disease that is killing, maiming and destroying a whole generation. Wake up people, the lives of our children are at stake. I highly recommend this book to every parent, teacher, counsellor, any person whose life touches anothers - everyone! Personal testimony. How to avoid the danger. What to do if your child is already involved in drugs. Signs to look for. Straight talk to teens. This book is a must for those who care.

The book does not have the in-depth coverage that expert SQL users would expect. If you are a beginner then it may suit you just fine. There are not enough nuts and bolts for people like me who really need the complete reference book.

A very good book on Oracle8 administration, performance tuning, backup and recovery. Full of well organized useful information.

I am primarily a Solaris system admin who wants to learn more about the inside of Oracle and what it takes to keep it up and running. The O'Reilly titles were a major disappointment since most of their stuff usually rocks, but let's hope for better 2nd editions on those along with some good tutorial material. The Oracle Press titles are totally disorganized and a major embarassment! David Austin has put together a great book with Using Oracle 8, and if you have to suffer through NT (and thank God I don't), he has plenty of material on Oracle Enterprise Mgr (all of chapter 4). Then he moves on to the nitty gritty, with a Unix-oriented or at least generic "pure Oracle" approach. I have spent two weeks browsing and reading various Oracle books and good choices are hard to find. I strongly recommend Alomari's "Oracle8 and Unix Performance Tuning" as well.

Considering that most of the Oracle DBA books on the market are simply horrible, filling hundreds of pages with unneeded info, this book is the first attempt to make a purely technical, no nonesense reference guide for DBAs to use. Those new to Oracle 8 will get a good introduction to new features. However, do not look for a recipe to install Oracle on Unix, do backup and recovery, set up the OS environment, etc. For these critical and complex tasks the book follows the old industry tradition: it gently touches upon these topics... and moves on.

Granted...I am a junior DBA but this book is very good at presenting the basics with enough detail that I would definitely recommend it over many other general Oracle DBA books (including the Handbook by Oracle Press). It really helped in spelling out the exact steps to creating a database as well as installing Oracle (which for some reason many books neglect). With that said, whether you use this book or another book, it is a good idea to also purchase topic specific books (eg. Backup and Recovery, Tuning, etc.) when more detail is needed.

This book is probably one of the best book I have in my personal Oracle Library. Very well explained examples, good detail on Oracle Architecture, Management and database administration. Author has done a good job. If you are looking to become an Oracle application developer "you are wasting your time" this book is more for intermediate level person or if you have some exposure to Oracle then you will understand what author is trying to explain. Other books you might want to take a look is "Oracle 8i DBA Handbook" very similar contents.