Marcus Hearn's exhaustive research in the early 1990's provides the basis of most of the information in this comprehensive guide to the formative years of Doctor Who, yet nowhere in the book does he recieve even pssing credit. Rather than being presented as a dry 'info-dump',the book's accessibility could have been vastly improved by more user-friendly approach to conveying its wealth of material, some of which is interesting, some mindlessly dull. Unforgiveable, too, is the insulting 'What others said about William Hartnell' section, which is not used in any other handbook in the series, woefully implying some kind of inadequacy, or unreliabilty in Hartnell's own words. Equally annoying are the reviews offered by David Howe for each individual story, which are vapid and predictable in the extreme. He awards 'Marco Polo' and 'The Crusade' 10/10, despite both being broadcast some 35 years ago, claiming 'he really can't find anything wrong' with either story. Is this really the point of being a Dr. Who fan, as Howe claims to be? Strangely enough, the stories that remain intact in the archives (and thus accessible for review) such as 'An Unearthly Child', the classic first ever story, favour less well, suggesting, as John Nathan-Turner once infamously stated, 'The memory cheats'. Although, as usual, it's sheer wealth of information is indispensible, this is by far one of the weaker handbooks in the series.

This book is a must for any Doctor Who fan. From the inception of the show in April 1962 to the end of October 1966, this book looks at the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who. These handbooks are really good. I've only seen these stories recently, but the book brings back the memories of them. It even thoroughly helps out on the missing episodes that can't be seen, by summarising these stories. So you get a sense of how it might've been like to have seen them. The attention to production details is excellent. You learn about interesting facts about the episodes: budgets, originally intended actors, location and studio recordings, original titles, original direction of some stories, etc. The book is divided into 8 chapters: William Hartnell stuff, the Doctor, the stories, establishing the myth, production diary, a focus on the making of the classic story "The Ark", and selling the doctor. The First Doctor Handbook is a great reference source of information on Doctor Who's early years. These handbooks are all great (there are 7 volumes in the Doctor Who handbook series), but the fact is that the first doctor handbook was actually the third one made in the series, published in 1994.

The co-authors trio of David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, and Stephen James Walker have proven themselves to be the definitive historians on the Doctor Who TV series. Besides the handbooks, they have also written three volumes focusing on the three decades of Doctor Who's television run: The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties. I highly recommend all of these books to any fan of the world's longest running science fiction TV series!

this book was pretty good but had less info on the regular game. also, the charts are a little less comprehensive. u should get the official prima guide instead

I read the book and it didn't help me hardly at all. Most everything mentioned in the book I had already known. Maybe it was just me, this book probably could help a newbie out alot.

This book is great if you love to cheat but are appalled by the lack of codes availabe for the game Diablo. Even though there are some strategies available for this game through vgstrategies.miningco.com this strategie guide is far better

Thats right, if you are a beginer, then I would try something else. I bought this book thinking that being a "Bible" it would be perfect for me. As a Programmer I thought it would be easy to understand. This book is toooooo brief. It doesnt explain the funtionality of any of the stencils. It tells you only how to open them. I am going to have to return it. I bought this to develop a website map. The directions are soooo poor. I could not get the job done with this book. I strongly suggest getting something else. When I discover it, I will post another message. Good Luck, and sorry for negetive review, but Im just trying to save you the hassle. RGDS SS @ NYC

The job of the technical writer is to make life easier for the technical
reader. We get paid big bucks to express complicated concepts in the simplest
possible way. It's not an easy job, but what's the fun in an easy job?

Unfortunately, many writers of technical content have other priorities. If
their work is "comprehensive", if it describes all the things it's supposed to
describe, they feel they've done their job. Never mind if the result is a
confusing assemblage of seemingly random facts, hard to follow and hard to
place in context.

Mark Walker is a poster child for this syndrome. It's pretty obvious how he
wrote Visio 2000 Bible. He made a comprehensive list of Visio features and
wrote about them one by one. Every feature, regardless of importance, gets much
the same treatment. Only a few cross references show how related features work
together. Little effort is made to describe the features clearly or concisely.

Here's an example. "There are two ways to activate and set snap and glue.
First, you can use the Snap and Glue Toolbar buttons (as shown in Figure 10-8),
or you can select Tools -> Snap & Glue to adjust settings in the Snap & Glue
dialog box. The Snap & Glue Toolbar button and dialog box are interrelated, so
a change in one also is recorded in the other. The following exercise
demonstrates the relationship...:" Then there's a lengthy demonstration of how
toolbar and dialog work. Then there's a mini-essay on when you'd use the
toolbar and when you'd use the dialog. And *then*, there's a vague, confusing
description of what the toolbar and dialog box are *for*. The whole discussion
uses up a couple of pages, but boils down to four simple statements: (1)
there's a bunch of Visio options relating to the Snap feature or the Glue
feature; (2) Two of these options enable or disable the two features; (3) the
rest of the options control the way the two features work; (4) you can set
these options one at a time (with the Snap & Glue toolbar) or all at once (with
the Snap & Glue dialog).

The reader can be excused for asking, "Jeesh, why didn't he just *say* that?"
Well, boiling complicated details down to simple descriptions is hard work. I
sometimes have to attack a concept six different ways before I'm able to
describe it in a few brief sentences. Good technical prose can be pretty
exhausting to write. It also tends to be discouraged by bosses and publishers,
who too often judge writers by the quantity of their output, not its quality.

Still, a good writer can deal with these issues. You help people understand why
fewer words often means better content. You balance work quality against
personal limitations and unavoidable deadlines. It's not easy to do all this
and still make a decent living. That's especially true if you're working
independently. But is that an excuse for short-changing your readers?

This is a good book. It goes into detail in several areas. My main concern when looking for a book was to exploit the relationship between Visio and other Office applications like Access and Excel. I was also interested in the Wizards that come with Visio. This book was helpful to me in those areas. Since the last half of this book covers these advanced features I would say that its content takes the reader from elementary topics to the more advanced features of Visio. The next step after reading this book is the developers edition from Microsoft.

This book goes into detail that new users will be interested in as well. It explains the temples and shapes, how to edit them, how to set the properties for the page and other miscellaneous topics you need to get started. If you want to make a visual representation of some data that interacts with a spreadsheet or database, you can use this book for guidance and creative insite.

The writers and publishers of this guide should be ashamed. There is nothing wihin its pages that can't be found out by simply playing the game through.
My primary reason for buying this guide was to find some of the things I missed before and discover new secrets. -Not only does this accursed guide NOT describe any of those things, it's actually completely in error in some of its descriptive points.
The only thing this guide does do is provide you with a very basic walkthrough; which is completely useless to anyone intelligent enough to play Wizardry 8.
So...I've plunked down my cash for this piece of trash, now what? -Guess it's time to go out and get myself a puppy...at least this guidebook will make a good chewtoy; it's nice and thick, chock full o' pictures with their descriptions-for some idiotic reason-placed on the previous page.

I found the book real useful. The is a lot of "fluff" in the beginning of it: lists of spells, races, classes etc., but the second half of the book is good. It gives you lots of useful information about the various areas and monsters in the game, and of course maps, and I found this information to be accurate. The game is so non-linear that the walthrough is pretty much guaranteed to not match your game completely, but it still gives you what you need to get past the areas where you get stuck.

This is definitely the kind of game a hintbook is useful for. There are a lot of puzzles. What do I do with that Alter? How do I open that strange lock? Sometimes, you have to come back much later in the game, and sometimes you can't progress until you figure it out - being able to know if I should worry about something now or later is worth the price of the book.

It also has Alchemy and Gadgetry formulas, which is nice if you don't enjoy experimenting with that sort of thing. The regular manual is exceptionally good on things like classes, skills, and spells, so those chapters don't add much.

The walkthrough isn't 100% accurate in the case of what items you may get, particularly out of chests where there's some randomness, but it does seem to cover all the plot points and major points of interest.

I haven't easily found any great online resources for this game, and there's definite potential to get stuck, so I'd say this book is useful.

this book opens with blackwood's great story: the wendigo. B is the master of the setting, noone can create the background and atmosphere like him. a very well written story from Brennan here. and Meloff's story is also an interesting read. derleth is at his best here. i don''t care that much for the guy, have never considered him to be HPL's great successor or anything, but he knows how to write, and i have always considered his story about Ithaqua to be his best contribution. the rest of the stories are well written. i don't think any of chaosium's anthologies contains of so much good writing than this. but good is not great. and the rest of the stories never turns out to be really good. the suspence killed by irrelevant writing going on for too long, mostly. sad. but the book is still wort reading

I was very disappointed with this book. Alice Walker seems more intent on showcasing her own writing, poems, and emotion than drawing much needed attention to FGM in Africa. There are compelling real-life accounts of FGM--read Desert Flower or Do They Hear you When you Cry.

"Female circumcision" or "female genital mutilation" is a hot topic. Unfortunately, there is "more heat than light" in most writings on this topic: this is a good example. The book and the movie are more about Alice Walker than about this ancient, puzzling, disturbing tradition. It is easy to confuse a topic such as this one with the book that covers it. Those whose first introduction to this subject comes through this book, will probably find it moving. Those who approach the subject seriously and professionally either as clinicians or anthropologists, will find this book a disaster: superficial, arrogant, condescending, ethnocentric, outraged, uninformed, manipulative, anecdotal, loaded with personal bias and without any serious research methodology. It is not a particularly useful contribution to the debate. If you are interested in this subject, the best thing you can do is move immediately beyond this book and come to grips with the real issues. Alice Walker is an intelligent, articulate woman; but she is hoplessly out of her depth here. Overall, a disservice to the women she wants to help.

I first became aware of female genital mutilation (FGM) when reading "The Color Purple," and again when reading Fausiya Kassindja's "Do They Hear You When You Cry." These two books led me to read "Warrior Marks." Female genital mutilation is a crime, an outrage, a sin before God. How dare the originators of this heinous procedure presume that what God created is faulty or a mistake? "Warrior Marks" enhanced what I had already learned about FGM. Any man (or woman) who tries to uphold this procedure as something that benefits girls and women is of a criminal mind. There is no benefit to putting a woman through this torture. If men were required to experience a similar experience, we would soon see the end of FGM. Please read this book if you seek another point of view. The addition of Alice Walker's poetry and the sharing of her experiences as she and Pratibha Parmar traveled through Africa is an eye-opener, and the way the book is written gives the reader a personal view in the same way that Ms. Kassindja's book does. Ms. Walker gives the women that she writes about a certain dignity, and while the reader may not be able to identify with the physical pain, some of the emotions may be felt. This is definitely a 5-star book.

Okay so I'm guessing your probably wanting to buy this to find out some killer tricks or something you didn't know, or you just can't figure out how to beat the last stage? I would not tell you to buy this then. I mean sure if your a die hard BZ lover and you wanted more BZ stuff to clutter your computer desk sure buy a few copys, but you obviously have online access reading this review so just surf over to some of the hundreds of fan web sites and read their stragety guides. I'm willing to bet a few sites even have the same wording as this book(I'm sooo sure its all an accident that they just thought alike). Not a bad book if you don't want to do the online research. But I wouldn't go off spending the money for it.

A strategy guide can be a gamer's best friend. It can clarify an ambiguous user guide, provide pros/cons of strategic options, and best of all... provide that "a-ha" tip that frees you from an eternity repeating the same level in Groundhog day fashion.

The BattleZone II guide is pretty good at all of the above. The overall strategy stuff is helpful. Good analysis of how to match one vehicle against another vehicle. Good tips on piloting skills. Good tips on how to build a base.

However, the mission-by-mission guide hasn't provided many "a-has" yet. I'll give credit to the game designers - this is pretty playable without a lot of additional help. Nevertheless, I have developed quite a few insights the hard-way, playing the same level over and over. These insights didn't always get mentioned in the book.

The book did show me how to cut my time on a particular level by 50%, so overall I'm happy. I'm especially happy to have a safety net in my hands as I progress to the more advanced levels of the game. If you are the type that doesn't like to get stuck, you will want this book. But keep in mind - the mission section doesn't explain it all - just enough to keep you moving.

Of all of the strategy guides I have read, Prima's Offical Strategy Guide for Return To Krondor is the least helpful strategy guide I have ever read. The walkthrough covers a SMALL portion of the book and is vague in a lot of areas. I found quite a few stuff that was not in the walkthrough at all. For example it doesn't tell you what the code for the tomb in chapter 9 is (Feist; code letters found on one of the statues in the same chapter). Another thing it doesn't cover is what tools to use to disarm the traps; they make you guess yourself. The list for the tools to use to disarm each trap can be found on the net. The strategy guide is good in telling you what ingredients to use to make potions (in case you want to do an experimentation if you don't have a recipe for the potion you want to make).Some strategies it suggests, I have found much better ones. And there aren't any good maps in there; only a vague map for chapter 5. I wish Sierra would make hint books again instead of having Prima doing the hintbooks for them.

If you have read the other review then I will echo it. The book is very narrow with details. There are no maps and the pictures that could act as maps are very dark are not helpful. the book gives you one way to do something but there are many better ways. It tells you exactly what you need to do and that is it, you can run around alot and find many more items and events. It could give you better advice like don't collect money it isn't a big issue, I had over 60,000 when the game ended! The first game had many side quests whereas this one has only 2! The caracter view is very limited and is very hard to see what is going on at times. The first game had a much better hint guide, but then again it was written by serria not prima!

I bought this book along with the game itself, so I read it from a beginner perspective. I would say that a novice would get some value out of it, but it would be of very little help to a player with any experience.

My main criticism is that about half the book is devoted to descriptions of how to play the various civilizations. The author went into far too much detail on this. It would have been much better to talk about general strategies that apply to all the civilizations, and then maybe devote 10% of the book on some of the unique features of each civilization.

I spend a few days going through this book while learning how to play the game. Afterwards, I bought the Prima's Unauthorized Strategy Guide and found it to be much more useful. I find myself referring to the Prima guide all the time to refresh my memory on certain aspects of the game (eg. before I play a civilization for the first time). I never refer to Walker's book.

I got a sense that the author did not play Age of Kings thoroughly and in depth, and that the book was written too quickly.

I must say that I disagree entirely with others who have written a review for this strategy guide. I think that it's great that the author gave so much information on each civilization; that way you can become an expert in one area. His advise is great and it works, and he seems to know a lot about the game. I do, however, agree that he should have written more general tactics, but a lot of the general tactics he explains when writing about the civilizations. His walkthroughs for each campaign and scenario are fantastic and prescise, and if I were you I would buy this guide in an instant.

(By the way, I was about in the middle of between expert and novice when I bought this book.)

This is an awesome game for anyone who likes constant action...You advance trough the middle ages while making the best military you can. Then with your military you attack your enemy. I suggest this game to everyone. With more than 3000 players online, I think youll like it.It is an awesome gift for anyone.

At first glance, it looks like a fairly comprehensive guide. But once you sit down and try to play through the game with it, it's flaws (and there are many) really begin to show. As Alundra 2 is a fairly linear title, there was a concentrated effort on providing a walkthrough of all the game's dungeons, rather than fill up pages with diagrams of towns and plot spoilers. This is a strong point of any strategy guide, this one in particular. However, being that a majority of the game is puzzle solving, a text based approach is simply not effective most of the time. The book mentions the puzzles to you, and merely says "solve the puzzle and the door will open" (or something to that effect) 50% of the time. This doesn't help players who can't figure out how to do this on their own (that's why they purchased the guide!). The few screenshots that accompany the generously margined pages are quite blurry, and thus do not help the player achieve any sense of orientation. And more often than not, these "screen shots" are placed 4 or 5 paragraphs after the solution (if there is one) is mentioned! Sometimes I had to flip back a page just to see what the caption was talking about. All of the major areas (and some of the minor ones) are mapped out in the back of the guide, but in such a small scale that it's impossible to make out anything from them, save where one room leads in to another. Every aspect of one game area was locked onto one or two pages (i.e., the first town, which has 2 areas, takes up one page, while one of the larger dungeons, with over 25 areas, also takes up one page--get the picture?). These maps are additonally incompletely labeled; you'll find no mention or pointing out of the powerful items, or half of the game's secrets for that matter. Mini-games are mentioned, but not in any bit of detail save where to find them. And forget about finding the puzzle pieces, special rings, and trading items. The only ones mentioned in the walkthrough are things I guarantee this author found; no effort was made to make this part of the book complete, and that was quite frustrating. The only other thing I consider a strong point to this book would be the enemy compendium and boss guide. Not that any of the game's creatures were that challenging, but an effort was made here to give the player as much information about the enemies as possible--this is as should be. But having this one piece doesn't make the guide outstanding. You're better off with an online FAQ to get you through the tougher puzzles and to help you locate the game's secrets.