I found this book to be very refreshing and uplifting as well as erotic. He uses eroticism just enough to get you to the edge without KNOCKING you over. My favorite by far was Check One, because of its simplicity. Love it!

There is no other way to decribe Mr. Williams except for Da Bomb. He definitely has it goin' on with his book Simple Love. The fact that it's so simple is what makes it so extraordinary. He is so expressive that by the end of the poem you feel every emotion that he was feeling as he was writing it. Keep it up Mr. Williams. I am definitely feelin' you (Especially on that --If I Could Hear Some Saxaphone--) I am awaiting the next release of your great works.

Ondrea Nicole Lewis

Simple Love is a misnomer. According to the brutally honest poetry of David Brian Williams, there is nothing simple about love. Williams has treated us to an unusally candid perspective of the often masked pain felt by men in love. His touches of eroticism reveal his desire to please, and his plea heard in "Check One" begs for an easier approach to dating and mating. There is nothing in "Simple Love" that any of us can not relate to. This man wants to love and be loved. Don't we all?

Our Earth is the Blue and Green Ark adrift in the dark. This alphabet book is poetic, rich in imagry and ideas for conservation, respect for life and the environment. The lyric language, imaginative illustrations and striking juxtaposition of content worthy of further reflection will intrigue most readers and touch many more with a reverence for nature.

Winner of the English Association's English 4-11 Award for the Best Children's Picture Book of 1999 - Non-Fiction Key Stage 2. We considered the scope and imaginative power of this work to be quite exceptional. Brian Patten takes each letter of the alphabet, presented by Sian Bailey as a work of art, in the fashion of the key letter of a medieval manuscript, and explores fascinating aspects of our planet from the origins of the earth to the development of the child in the womb. In free verse and with the help of 11 gifted artists he evokes images of the creatures in the oceans, on land and in the sky, of features of the earth like rain forests and volcanoes, of the planets and the stars in the heavens and of the technological achievements of human beings. This exploration in poetic language of such wide ranging phenomena make the book a wonderful celebration of our world for the new millennium. It also reinforces the notion that non-fiction can make a strong appeal to the imagination and can be the beginning of the reader's further investigation of concepts and topics. Further help here comes in the form of an exceptionally fine glossary with a scholarly flavour. Readers of different ages will be inspired by this highly original and informative book and will return to it again and again.

The Book of VMware: The Complete Guide To VMware Workstation by Linux expert Brian Ward is a comprehensive guide to making the most of the VMware Workstation product. Individual chapters cogently address the VMware virtual machine from its floppy drives and serial ports to its USB interface and peripherals, how to install, configure, and operate VMware, Windows, Linux, and other guest operating systems, network file transfer, troubleshooting and much more. The Book Of VMware is a truly excellent and useful resource for the dedicated programmer wanting to implement and utilize VMware.

I was asked to teach a class on various operating systems such as Windows 3.X, Windows 9X, NT, 2000, XP and Linux. The class was to go over the basic of each OS and the kicker was the class was to be 3 days long. With that many OSes it would have taken 3 days for installs alone, until I found VmWare.

With a basic understanding of the application I managed to teach the class, if I had this book then I would have been able to do so much more. Ward has simply put together the best book on the subject matter that I ever come across.

Starting right of the books delves into the virtual machine and the requirements for install and configuration. The author explains in detail what each version requires in order to have it working properly. Then there is over 100 pages just on the different guest system setups and configurations, again the author attention to detail makes this some of the most interesting reading of the book.

Then the book work with networking and stand alone operations making sure you have a good understanding of the differences. Finally the author gives several pages to the troubleshooting of the application. You have tips and tricks for each OS and hints to avoiding problems before they happen.

Overall this book has already given me several tips and tricks to enhancing the classes I am teaching and I am sure that I will find many others before I am through. Excellent work and if the application gets updated I certainly hope the book does as well.

I found this book informative and readable; a thoroughly documented guide to black music in the 50s, 60s and 70s by someone who is evidently a fan yet who does not allow his passion for the music to lead him into simplification or wishful thinking. Some parts of the book are a very useful corrective to this tendency in other books I have read - for example his treatment of black consumption of white music. He is particularly interesting on the subject of the sexual politics of the music and its relation to the social and political background. An accessible and entertaining book which maintains scholastic rigour throughout and is never guilty of sloppiness or turgidity.

what i dig about this Book is it's honesty.Music along with Sports have brought people of all Races together but when it's over folks go back into their Enviroment.The Music Speaks of Being Free&that's How People Get into Music but not Viewing the person as a Human Being is very sad.this book points that out&more.it's cool to Emulate James Brown, but being him?the business has always been Unequal.the charts have Pop,R-N-B/Rap(now Lumped as one)then Country,etc.....this is a Must Read.I Understood it all&then some.

The Linux Problem Solver is that and more. As a new Linux user, I am developing an appreciation of this book in a hurry! The organization of this book is straightforward and logical, each chapter covering an essential topic of making Linux work and how to return it to working order when it stops working right, or getting it to work right after you've made an incorrect change. The author spends a chapter discussing things such as client networking, file systems, networking with Windows and Apples, printing, kernel upgrades, backups and crash recovery, and user environments. One chapter I feel deserves special praise is Chapter 6, installing software from source code, something I haven't found in other Linux books, at least not yet. Since I'm coming from a Windows environment, I'm relieved that someone out there realized new Linux users don't all automatically know how to install software in this environment.
As far as subject coverage, the author tells you the basics of what you need to know and how it works before he starts talking about what can go wrong and how to fix it. Granted, sometimes the information can be sketchy or shallow in places, but there is still a great deal of information packed into 239 pages.
The one small complaint I have with this book is that it doesn't really talk about the initial Linux installation. In fact, I haven't found a really good book that does talk about it in detail, frustratingly enough. Other than that, I can see this book getting frequent use as I explore Linux further and start to do more with it. If you can only buy one book for Linux, this is not the book to have unless you're already conversant with Linux. If you're not, this is a great companion book to have along with a Linux primer for troubleshooting when you do something wrong.

I initially felt the title was a little misleading. However, it might be more an interpretation issue of what a "problem solver" is. I initially interpreted that as "trouble shooter". This books does not cover that aspect of administering a Linux system. Still, the format of "what to do when this occurs" is extremely useful, especially for Linux newbies. If you want the nuts and bolts of administering a Linux system, look elsewhere. However, this has a lot of places where I said, "Hey, what didn't I think of that?"...

It's no coincidence I use this book as the authoritative reference when I'm at work: I'm lucky enough to claim the author as our local unix god.

Anytime something on our network of several hundred linux boxes causes me to scratch my head, I ask Mr. Ward what to do and he replies "It's in the book." Invariably, it is, and he's already covered the specific problems I'm encountering.

The Linux Problem Solver is blunt about which programs are horrible and should be avoided, and which will really make your life easier. The advice it offers is always backed by lots of experience.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who's in charge of taking care of one or more linux machines. If you want to keep your machine(s) secure, get printing to work, or fix your X configuration, you'll find out how in The Linux Problem Solver.

Also makes a great gift for any System Administrator; I've given several myself!

This book has a lot of information in it. It is written plainly, and is easy to understand. Sometime it gets a bit to detailed for the beginner in some sections like lighting. As a reference for plants and fish (fresh/marine) it's a good book to start with. In 12 years of fish keeping I have seen few books that can match it, especially for the price. I bought my copy back in 1995, and although I have many other books on the shelf on aquaria, this is the 1st book I grab.

Cons: This book is written in Europe, so some of the equipment they picture is not available here, but it still gives you lots of facts & rules of thumb on fish keeping that you can use. It is a little short on water "how to" manipulate water attribute, it only talks about pH, ammonia, and nitrite levels. Water hardness, iron, and CO2 level info is missing, much more a beginner and intermediate level book.

I give it two thumbs up - or five stars. :-) I agree with a previous reviewer that indicated that it is his best aquarium reference book. The only thing that I would like to point out about this book that might make it slightly confusing to a prospective reader is that the author apparently resides in Britain. I found a few discrepancies in fish naming compared to pet shops in my area. Also, after I first set up my aquarium, my fish became ill with what the author refers to as White Spot. When I went to the pet shop looking for medication for White Spot, they didn't know what I was talking about. As it turns out, White Spot is known locally as Ick or Ich. If I had paid closer attention when reading, I would have noticed that the scientific name begins with Ich. To me, these are minor inconveniences in an otherwise well-written and well-organized book. In addition, the color photographs are excellent, making it easy to identify a species.

I highly recommend this book.

This book is a very good all-round book; it both deals with setup and maintenance of the aquarium (location, filters, heating, water quality, etc), and has a lot of pictures of common plants and fish. It puts the various fish into categories like whether they function well in a communal aquarium, where they mostly stay in the tank (bottom, middle, top), and what their preferred food is (plant, livefeed, dried food). This is a book you will find yourself returning to again and again for reference. Highly recommended!

This is an excellent and well-written book. It is accessible and well documented. Some of the facts are stunning, which makes for a good reminder: if you aren't angry then you aren't paying attention. I highly encourage you to give it a read; it isn't a waste of time since it is such a fast page-turner and b/c it is riddled with information. You might as well take a look at what we are subsidizing.

I feel this book is an excellent resource in realizing the history our government has being prejudice. This book details the ideals of the COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram), the progam that was created by the FBI in order to stop the progress that blacks, hispanics, and women had been making in the 60's and 70's. I feel it is a necessity to have and/or read if you are currently studying the history of political rights. A real quick shout-out to Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine for helping me discover this book by using a piece of it in his song 'Wake Up'.

The more times I use this book as a reference, the more I find. To call it a wealth of information is to wildly understate the case. It is more like a bottomless pit...

At first glance, the book's most impressive attribute is the large number of documents which are reproduced (a picture's worth a thousand words, I guess). But then one find's one's self getting caught up in the explanatory narrative, and the documents shift into their proper background or ullustrational focus. And then there's the notes, hundreds of them, each brimming with detailed explanations of particular points, citations, suggested readings.

There's just no end to it. If one were to be allowed only one book on the FBI, this would definitiely be it!

Any chance the authors will be updating it any time soon?

This is a solid magickal text, and a good introduction to Chaos Magick. Use it with Phil Hine's Condensed Chaos to create an intense and very functional course of study to begin your study of chaos magick, or magick in general. My only complaint about the book is Carroll's somewhat stuffy style, though he's not nearly so bad as some other, earlier authors who will remain unmentioned. Bottom line is, if you're serious about your study of Magick, this book will serve you well.

I remember borrowing this book from a sinister and dark "goth" type several years ago when I was in college. He was your typical chaos magician ("ooh, look at me I'm scary") and both he and the book unsettled me from my Golden Dawn perspectives. One of the most useful parts of the book and an absolute ESSENTIAL for any occultist is the Liber MMM section in Liber Null. This takes the reader through several basic exercises to obtain Gnosis or magickal trance. The next sections of the book are discourses on white and black magick from a chaos and IOT perspective, whatever that is worth. Peter Carroll gives a rather poor explanation of sigils- the best being Practical Sigil Magick by Frater U:D (out of print). His essay on the Alphabet of Desire is interesting but strange- a much better explanation is found in Stealing the Fire from Heaven by Stephen Mace. In the Psychonaut section of the work are Carroll's views on a myriad of subjects. He totally contradicts himself in several places and in his later writings but, hey, it's chaos magick isn't it? The value of this book is that it is not your standard Golden Dawn-Wicca-Thelema stuff that every occult writer has repeated over and over again for the last 100 years. I think that Liber Kaos by Carroll is a superior book and the Liber KKK section in that work one of the greatest contributions to the field of chaos magick.

If you are new to the writings of Peter Carroll you should read this book first. It is the result of a tremendous effort to clarify the often confusing and unecessarily complicated writings of the past. In this day and age it is no longer necessary to withold this information or to write about it in "code".

Carroll presents his information in a clear, rational and pragmatic way. Readers who have read his later books will notice that some of the theories presented here have become dated, which is only natural considering that the book was written over twenty years ago and that the development of magical theory and practice has progressed since then. In spite of this, it is important to familiarize oneself with the information presented here as it gives a solid foundation for understanding the basic priciples and techniques that his later, more advanced books only touch upon briefly. For example the book has the clearest system for attaining proper mind control which is absolutely necessary for more advanced work. It also explains the different methods of going into trance as well as the procedures for creating personalized sigils or encoded desires.

The second part of the book entitled Psychonaut (great word by the way) consists of essays on a variety of topics related to the subject at hand: The use of psychoactive substances in ritual, different models for explaining magical phenomenon, etc.

In a way, I tend to regard this book as a successful clarification of what Crowley and Spare tried to say in their confusing and long-winded fasion.

Harbors and High Seas gets more use from me than the lexicon reference to the Aubrey Maturin series, A Sea of Words. I skimmed through Harbors and High Seas after each O'Brian book the last time through; leaving alone the clearer geographical detail, this really adds depth to O'Brian's already convincing world.

I would recommend this highly to fans of the series who feel bereft at its close and long to return, to poke around a little themselves. Harbors and High Seas is full of taking off points, tangents to the stories that the curious reader can follow up on. A print of the decrepit Temple, reproduced here, might spark you to pursue some detail or other about Napoleon's Paris. The discussion of the many Desolation Islands has lots of little sides to it that could reward some curiosity. Like the stories, this is a sort of open-ended invitation into the historical setting, you might say.

Harbors and High Seas is a "companion" to the series, a complement to it, not just a reference to be consulted when you're muddled. Don't just refer to it -- read it for fun.

If you enjoy the Aubrey-Maturin books as I did (and I read almost nothing else for several months), you will find this book an excellent reference aid. At times I found the geography in the books difficult to follow. The maps in Dean King's companion set forth with excellent clarity where Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin have been and when they were there. Although I found Dean King's lexicon (his other book) more helpful, I would nonetheless recommend this one.

I'm now on book 7 of the Aubrey-Maturin series, and have only had my Companion for the last 2...how much it adds to the joy and the education. The best part of the companion is the maps, with clearly marked routes taken by Lucky Jack's vessels. O'Brian's description of Aubrey passing by Elsinore while Jack describes his role in Hamlet as a young midshipman comes alive with both the map and the picture of Elsinore. As well, eliminating the frustration of trying to determine what is fiction (Grimsholm) from what is not (Admiral Suamarez) greatly adds to the historical learnings.

The only downside to having this companion is the irresistable temptation to read ahead...the plot lines of the first 17 books are all given in general outline. As O'Brian readers know, however, much of the joy is as much in the characterization and writing as in the plot line. So, even if you do look ahead, it in all likelihood only will increase your desire to move on to the next book....I personally can hardly wait to get to Treason's Harbour and the mood that O'Brian will create around historic Malta.

If you love maps, though, and have always used them to add a visual learning dimension and reference to the words, you can't possibly read the books without it.

In closing, I guess I should add the warning that as addictive as these books are, they become even more addictive with the companion.

Beware!