Yes, the book is useful. It is not fantastic, beautifully written, crucial to success, or even 100% accurate. This book, with all of its typos, feels as though it has not been proofread more than once. Some of its tables have incorrect values or are poorly organized.

But it is useful.

The book is accurate about 90% of the time, and the quests are well outlined - though I certainly don't believe the quests are difficult enough to require this guide. The primary use of the game is in its tables (when they are accurate), and in their explanations of the actual mechanics behind the game (such as how the game chooses which quests are included in a particular single-player game).

Though all of the information in this guide can be found with a moderate amount of replay, this guide makes it available immediately. I would not use it as a strategy guide, I would use it as a quick reference to keep open while you are hunting for something in particular.

To be fair, I don't believe Diablo requires a strategy guide at all. The game is fairly straight-forward, with none of the mind-boggling complexity of some real RPGs (i.e. Final Fantasy).

This is definitely the best Diablo guide available. Unlike some of the others, the information is complete and accurate. This guide lists the information necessary to complete every side quest in the game, and then some. Also, it gives a complete list of all the prefixes and suffixes for the magical items. At the end, you can find stats on all the enemies and shrines in the game. This guide is definitely worth buying.

I got this book a very long time ago and I still find myself pulling it out to check on things. This book lists all the types of weapons, their damage ranges, requirments, every helmet, every piece of armor, every shield, their armor class ranges, and requirments as well as every magical prefix and suffix and what each does. You'll also get a full list of the spells as well as a 1/2 page to 1 1/2 page description of the spell. Also listed are all the quests in the game. Before long I got a level 50 warrior and a level 50 sorcerer with mainly the help from this book plus 15% skill and 85% luck on my part. All in all, this is a great book and even if you think you've mastered the game, this book is worth the price of admission.

There is so much boring detail that I could hardly finish this book. Ever since Lathen turned John Thatcher into a minor character in this series, the books have been dull.

The latest John Putnam Thatcher book continues the trend of focusing less on Thatcher and his fellow bank associates, and more on third party participants in the murder and mayhem going on around Thatcher. The European locale adds flavor to the plot; the internal politics of a unified western Europe organization makes for interesting reading. Readers know what to expect from Ms. Lathen, and will not be dissapointed. Hopefully the series will continue despite the death of one of the two co-authors using the Emma Lathen pseudonym.

An environmental disaster has struck Germany^Rs Kiel Canal whena fogcauses numerous collisions and oil spills. Due to the accident and the high degree of shipping through the canal, the German government is thinking of taking out a loan to rebuild and widen the canal. The myriad of insurance claims that follow the aftermath and the potential German project are both being handled through the Baltic Area Development Association (BADA). Wall Street, ever interested in a good deal, dispatches John Putnam Thatcher to Gdansk, Poland to learn whether it pays to invest in the canal renovation deal.

However, the simple business transaction takes a nasty turn when a BADA official claims to have uncovered fraud within the organization. Immediately after the announcement, the official^Rs battered corpse is found and the murder of his lover shortly follows. The Polish police officer Oblonski turns to Thatcher to help him muddle through the world of international finance to uncover the identity of a fiscal murderer.

A SHARK OUT OF WATER is the twenty-third book in the Thatcher series and surprisingly with all of those novels, the current story is a refreshing tale. Thatcher is a great character and the story line is filled with self deprecating irony as Emma Lathen laughs at the slapstick efforts of governments and international corporations capitalization of the former Soviet Union. The who-done-it is well written, but it is the intricate glimpses into the wacky, weird, almost mystical, world of international finance that turns this into another great Thatcher novel. Harriet Klausner

We've read all of Susan Rogers Cooper's delightful stories, including the six Sheriff Milt Kovak books, the (very difficult to find) two Kimmey Kruse stand-up comedian stories, and the previous six EJ Pugh mysteries. Obviously we like Cooper's great writing ability; one would swear she can turn a soccer practice carpooling chore into an event of note with her descriptive and insightful commentary on everyday life. All of her characters tend to be a little low profile, humble practitioners with an overdose of curiosity that leads to solving crimes, sometimes almost unwittingly. Unlike her sheriff, who of course was paid to catch killers, Kimmey and EJ are strictly amateurs who depend on cajoling friends and policemen into helping move along reasonably good plots.

In this story, EJ is far from her home (Texas), and is re-united with her three sisters (with spouses/partners along) in a contrived vacation in St. Johns cooked up by her mother who wants to see the girls "get along". Much of the story revolves around their childhood goings-on and/or their perceptions of each other's adult lives and situations in society. Hence, the plot is almost a little secondary to the mental and verbal meanderings in the Virgin Islands setting. There is a murder or two to solve, and even if a bit improbable in total, we're hooked enough by a few real clues mixed in with several red herrings along the way to feel some suspense. Indeed, we thought the ending fairly surprising, and hardly anticipated the ultimate culprit at all.

While we'd readily give almost all Cooper's books 4 stars, we don't think this one was one of her best -- maybe the unusual setting (although entertaining in itself in some ways) put our author off her usual game plan; and with none of the regular supporting characters to help out, we didn't know anybody here either. Still, the faithful will want to read this; and while many of her others seemed better to me, all 15 books are fun, worthwhile "reads" without demanding too much from us the reader but "enjoy". Why not ?!!

This was the first book that I've ever read by Ms. Cooper. I picked it up intially because I had been to St. John, U.S.V.I. a few times in the past, and wanted to see which sites were mentioned.

I liked this book, but I found the writing style to be a bit spare. I have no real mental image of what the protagonist and her husband look like, or whether or not I would like them if I met them. The story itself was interesting, and the sibling problems added a nice twist to the story. Actually, I probably would have liked the book better if the family relationships were the sole focus of the book (Ms. Cooper seemed to handle that well). The mystery seemed to be a secondary issue here, and the whole treatment of the crimes that were occuring seemed too lackadaisical.

Although I liked the book, I don't yet know if I care enough about the characters to read the other stories. I'll have to think about that for a while...

This is my first E.J. Pugh mystery. It was a very fast read, the mystery kept me guessing, and I liked the characters of the four sisters. The memories of E.J. and her sisters while they were growing up greatly helped in understanding the dynamics of their dysfunctional family. The mystery itself was good, clues were there, but not obvious. I will read the other books in this series with enjoyment. If you are looking for an easy fast read, this is it.

Book is too massive to hold while reading. Pages not sequential due to frequent insertions of other articles and reproductions. Good nautical history but doesn't flow . A difficult read and practically impossible in bed.

"America and the Sea" is a magnificent study of our maritime history. It is magnificent in breadth starting with Norse settlements in North America and continuing through the end of the 20th Century. It is magnificent in depth as it delves deeply into key areas of historical importance. With numerous vignettes, the authors are joined by others in capturing detailed views of people and events that make history come alive. It is magnificent in presentation as it uses colorful illustrations and pictures, many with captions that are history lessons in themselves.

Writen by several of our nation's pre-eminent maritime scholars, "America and the Sea" successfully blends together our naval history with the more traditional view of maritime history.

While handsome (and large) enough to be a coffee-table book, it would be a shame if that were its only use. "America and the Sea" should be read time and time again by all who have an interes! t in our nation's history.

I nearly didnt finish this book as it was a little hard to get into. The first part reminds me of someone writing mind chatter. It was disorienting to me. There was enough good though that I kept reading and am glad I did. It is filled with "That's the way I feel, or I wish I could say it that way" type of writing. Stick with it. It ends up a good read.

In Celebrating the Coyote, Barbara Waters writes about her husband, author Frank Waters, and how she survived his death. Known as the "Grandfather of Southwestern Literature," Frank Waters wrote more than 25 books and was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize.

Far from being overshadowed by her famous husband, Barbara Waters earned degrees in journalism and psychotherapy, the second of which she found helpful in understanding the man she married.

Waters reveals the sources of the inner strength and wisdom guiding her life. She says she realizes that "my whole book is a ceremony celebrating my exchange of energies with the universe." It a memoir of a journey from the depths of intense grief to a life newly appreciated. Although she includes details of her marriage, Water primarily shares the growth she underwent, both in being married to Frank Waters, and in recovering from his death.

She poignantly describes the "Damn firsts," like her first trip alone and first Valentine's Day without him, then adds, "the infinite number of Firsts is always surprising, sometimes overwhelming. Seconds are not nearly so wearing. Except for the sound of ambulances."

Waters adeptly weaves events from her youth, her life with Frank, the philosophy found in his books, and all that she has learned in a lifetime of study into a tapestry that celebrates life. As John Nichols writes in his forward, readers will find Celebrating the Coyote "a poetic, informed, and spellbinding elegy for a man and a marriage, and for the wondrous complexity of all life."

The reviews of Massie's other book are telling here as well. The writing style is fine, and the real world examples are interesting, but there's NOT a lot of meat. If you're looking for a light read during which you'll say "oh, yeah - i should (or could) have thought of that", this might be it. If you're looking for a hardcore primer on personal effectiveness, this is NOT it.

Brigid McGrath-Massie has artfully combined her wit and wisdom into a thought-provoking analysis of personal effectiveness. Through her personal experience and business leadership training, she has pulled together an easy read of material that has one really thinking about "what they say when I leave the room!" A "must have" book in a library of today's contemporary leadership information.

and a lot of wasted paper! None of the pictures included are clearx--certainly not money well spent! This book is slight and doesn't even include any insightful commentary.

John Waters is one of the few artists who would accept acomplimentary comparison to Jeffrey Dahmer. "I didn't wantthem to leave," Dahmer said of his attempts at zombie-making. The simple poignancy of Dahmer's needy rationale and the horror of its expression are a jolting juxtaposition, an engrossing exhibition of desire and obsession. Director's Cut presents an engrossing exhibition of Waters' obsession: a highly twisted, idiosyncratic altar to celebrity and the movies. Waters doesn't want movies to leave. His photographs are almost exclusively movie stills taken off television screens, creating a marvelous freedom from the motion of motion pictures. Like VCR freeze-framing, they allow you to gaze to your scopophilic heart's content upon normally fleeting moments. As a specific memory detail may encapsulate a larger event, Waters' stills crystallize his vision of a film or career. A jock strap draped across a brass desk lamp stands for an entire sexual encounter; Baby Doll is reduced to Carroll Baker's empty crib. Like the crackling TV static in David Cronenberg's Videodrome, Waters' images are rough and sensually tactile. Moire patterns, pixels, and the curving black frame of the TV screen itself imbue the photographs with a lush, visceral texture absent from high-gloss art photography or porn. Jean Seberg burning at the stake, hypos puncturing veins, a**holes spread wide, Lana Turner's neck, the numeric countdown of a film leader: desire charges the innocuous and the explicit alike. The book elicits the same fascination as pornography for a fetish you don't share. Obese women or amputees may not send you, but expression of the obsession in and of itself is riveting. With comedic self-portraits and stills of famous, infamous, and mediocre director's credits (including Waters and the legendary pseudonym Allan Smithee), Director's Cut turns Waters' obsessive gaze back onto himself and his own filmic celebrity, extending his inquiry beyond even the scope of his films.

Waters once wrote that he never uttered the word 'art' "unless referring to Mr. Linkletter." In "Director's Cut", he has distilled a lifetime of obsessions down to a very artful collection of film and video stills that are simple and beautiful even if their meanings aren't apparent. The book is essentially a visual companion to his hilarious essays in "Shock Value" and "Crackpot", especially the ones about movies, his own and others. You don't necessarily need to be familiar with them to enjoy "Director's Cut" but it certainly helps. This is one of the more interesting art books I've seen in that most of the images are presented completely out of their original context; Waters lends his own sensibility to them and they become transfixing. Through Waters' eyes, the juxtaposition of Francis the Talking Mule and stills of Jessica Lange in "Frances" isn't merely a joke; the 'low' culture presumption of one image makes you question the 'high' (or middlebrow) presumption of the other. My favorite images in the book come from 'The Bad Seed", a Warner Brothers movie from the Fifites about a homicidal little girl that is the summation of everything Waters believes in: obsession with the outwardly mundane, willfullybad (or even murderous) behavior in social situations, crime as personal expression, the artist as outlaw and social misfit. And his stills from "The Tingler" have a mysterious beauty that remind you of early Surrealist photography; they have a depth to them not present in the original movie, which could be said of almost all the stills. Overall , the book is a triumph: it's extremely personal for Waters and yet vastly entertaining if you let his sensibility overtake you.

Harmless bit of fluff that looks more like a children's book than a serious golf tome. No real new information about the courses themselves, but the watercolor illustrations were good enough to keep me from returning the book. Can't recommend buying it unless you like pictures more than words.

Quite a book with awesome illustrations. Has all of the great links of Scotland with great watercolors. I keep coming back to this book. I have to go to these courses now!

One of the best books written about the links courses of Scotland. The reader can tell that the authors are passionate about the courses. The authors capture the very essence of what is like to play Scotland's link courses in text and illustrations. I took this book with me when I visited most of the courses. What a great find!

Very general information but none of the desparately needed specifics. Reads like someone's vacation monologue.

As another reviewer notes, this book is a general review of the entire BC west coast. I have used it to get the flavor and identify areas for trips. Then I hit the charts and look for local contacts. I have never been disappointed in the information. Ince's recommendations are absolutely sterling. My view is that specifics like campsites and itineraries are best discovered not copied, so this book has exactly the level of detail I look for in a guide book. There are quite a few sort of goofy anecdotes, but they usually contribute to painting a picture of the area's aesthetic qualities. This is a narrative from the paddler's perspective, not a Michelin Guide. It is the best guide for remote areas of Vancouver Island that I know. I'd like to see it updated.

I have used this book as a guide for over 10 years. It has helped and never failed me.

I felt the material included in this book was not useful and in some cases, very questionable. I would not buy it again and do not feel that it was useful.

This booklet only deals with copper tubing embedded in a concrete slab. The author only gives token mention to other tubing products such as PEX, rubber, etc. Also, there is almost no mention of using radiant floor heat under a wood framed floor. If you are planning a copper tube/under slab installation, this appears to be a good book. However, if you are planning to use PEX tubing, or install a system under a wood framed floor, skip it.

I enjoyed the practical advise and instructions on how to work with radiant floor heating. I had the opportunity to buy a home with radiant floor heating at one time - when I lived back east. I remember the warm floors in the winter.

I can recommend this book for those who want a good, down-to-earth, useful book.