My kids (age 8 and 10) are really interested in the environment and I see them reading this book a lot. They go back again and again to explore new topics. The photos are really great and seem to help the book keep their interest for a long time.

I purchased this book for my daughter, and have ended up reading it just as much myself! The pictures are great, and the information is clear and well-presented. My daughter doesn't only use it for her school projects, but often just picks it up to read for entertainment. I give this book my highest recommendation both to adults as well as kids.

A stellar example of children's reference material -- my students use this book constantly as part of their research projects and assignments.

This book is a great anthology of American plays. It includes plays from the the 1700's and the 1990's, a plethora of plays. And this book not only covers a large time span, it also includes plays written by playwrights from a variety of different cultures. It will provide you with classic plays that you read in high school, and plays you have never heard of, but all are worth reading, and all will enlighten you about our American Culture.

Wheel Boats On The Missouri: The Journals And Documents Of The Atkinson-O'fallon Expedition 1824-1826 is an archival reference showcasing a specialized slice of early American frontier history - as reflected by the original words of the wheel boat men who were directed by President James Monroe to negotiate peace treaties with Native American tribes along the Missouri River. The resulting use of 475 infantry soldiers, "gunboat diplomacy," and man-powered wheel boats across a 3,000 mile expedition is meticulously detailed among numerous primary references. Journals dealing with daily life, navigation difficulties, American Indian cultures and political negotiations provide an amazing glimpse into army life in an America of almost two centuries past. Wheel Boats On The Missouri is an impressive work of scholarship and a strongly recommended addition to academic and community library American history reading lists and reference collections.

Plato's The Republic, is not only a classic work of the fourth century B.C., but a masterpiece of utopian literature as a whole. Mr. Lee's translation brings into light the political and poetical wisdom of Plato into English from the original Greek. In The Republic, Plato raises questions that are still at the heart of many modern conflicts and heated debates. What is justice? What is goodness? What is the right political authority? Plato examines these questions as aspects of a single theme. He offers a portrait of an ideal state in which power is entrusted to the philosopher king(s), and other men and women accept the authority of the wise and the good. If no one has read The Republic, then he or she has not read anything!

In the "Republic," Plato may or may not have accomplished what he set out to do, which is to define justice and prove that it is superior to injustice, irregardless of either's consequences. However, what he DID do is set the foundation for over two thousand years of thought. Read this work slowly; within each of the seemingly-simple discussions there is a world of though to be discovered. Anyone with the least bit of background in philosophical readings can literally read page-by-page, discovering the sources of many of the greatest philosophers of all-time. The "Republic" is not so much a work of literature as it is an explosion of thought; a ten-book brainstorm of one of the greatest minds of all-time. By the work's end, whether or not you feel Socrates to have successfully answered Glaucon's challenge is almost irrelevant, for the argument will have already left your mind reeling.

Plato's "Republic" is probably the most important work in the history of Western Philosophy, or atleast I believe it is. The reader can literally flip from page to page counting how many subsequent philosphies arose from interpretations of the words on each page. Of all Western Philosophers, Plato was one of the greatest writers. Even though some readers may find the dialogue style exhausting, I find it enjoyable because it turns the real-life participants in the arguments into literary characters who can, at times, be quite humorous. All literary merits aside, the overabundance of profound thoughts to be found in "The Republic" make it a must-read for anyone who likes to think.

Lots of Thurston, Mike Watt & Lee Renaldo, some David Yow, only one entry from Courtney and none from Stephen Malkmus, so the title is a little misleading. If you're a Beck fan, you'll love his entries. They're the best of the bunch. He describes the world as he sees it in Beck-style free-form, without bashing his fellow performers. Thurston's entries are almost entirely in strangely self-righteous defense of Kathleen Hanna and an incident in which he was not even involved, which is a waste. The last I heard, Kathleen is more than capable of speaking for herself so his defense of her/bashing of Courtney is unnecessary. I expected and would have preferred more insight into the Lollapalooza performing experience.

Here is a low priced little book with lots of journal entries from Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, quite a few from Beck and a couple others (but the others don't contribute too much). It is a very interesting inside look at one of the most vividly remembered tours in independent rock history. A lineup featuring the likes of these many performers will probably never cross the U.S. again in my lifetime. The Kathleen Hanna incident doesn't actually dominate Thurston's entries, but takes up a large chunk of his journals. Beck's entries are great. David Yow doesn't say too much... One overriding theme is how big of a jerk Courtney Love really is. There are plenty of little interesting stories relayed along the way. Don't miss out you Sonic Youth and Beck fans! And for all those who still remember being at one of these shows, it might be interesting to hear what was going on behind the scenes.

In 1995, the Lollapalooza maelstron plundered thru the cities & towns of America, a [diamond] sea of noise & beats changing lives & generally having fun. That's what I'm lead to believe anyway. Thurston is more or less the star here as he was in 1991: the Year Punk Broke, & there's some other cool & crazy kids there too. He writes in his typically amusing & insightful style about the Mexican food, the backstage parking that's reserved strictly for Hole & how Kim has to pretend to be Courtney so SY's car can get in, & how Bek was outraged by this, the Kathleen vs Courtney thing, the crowds disappearing when SY are last on the bill, etc. Lee Ranaldo also writes from the sonic perspective, of course in his more contemplative style usually except when he gets pissed off he shows it. Well, to be honest, I've read these things as they were intended, as computer things so I didn't get everything, I'd very much like to hear what the great Beck had to say about it as well. Yeah the show goes on eevry year but that was the one that mattered. Very interesting reading that you can go back to many times for enlightenment/amusement.

I guess I expected that a platform independent standard such as XML would have been better expained using a platform independent language such as java. For the unix/java engineers out there....this book contains much useful information and don't get me wrong, I learned a lot. The question is, would I have learned as much or possibly more if I didn't have to put up with 90% of the code examples written in VBScript? Many examples require Internet Explorer. Content was up-to-date and informative but somewhat repetative (12 authors).

The book covers too many topics and just few are developed in deep while others are superficially introduced because not yet standardized at the time of print. The book claims it covers the following topics: XML, XSLT, DOM, DTD, SOAP, XLink, XPointer, XPath, WAP, WML...and more; but just XML, Schemas, DTDs and SOAP could almost fit the book's size.

Chapters don't follow a very logic thread and it doesn't deal enough with very relevant subjects. Wrox probably planned to make this book the XML bible but I think they are far from the target.

The XML declarative language, with its adaptability and expressive power, is continuing to become the language of choice for reporting and classifying information. XML is a formal grammar that captures the syntactic features of a document type definition, and its properties, syntax, and applications are discussed effectively in this book. It covers XML as formalized by the W3C and the authors show how to use XML in Web-based and database applications. Readers who have developed applications in HTML will probably view XML as somewhat more abstract, since the visual representation of the content of a document is not emphasized in XML. Readers are expected to have a background in HTML, JavaScript, Java, and ASP in order to read the book. Although XML can be learned by reading the W3C specifications, these documents are frequently difficult reading, and this book makes the learning of XML much easier than reading these specifications. They include the W3C specifications for XML 1.0 in an appendix to the book for the interested reader. The book is a little dated, since the W3C has been updating XML specs since the time of publication (especially with regard to schemas), but there is a 2nd edition coming out soon.

In Chapter 1, XML is introduced as a mark-up language and its inherent extensibility emphasized. This is followed by a detailed treatment of XML syntax in the next chapter, with emphasis placed on the hierarchical nature of XML. The authors do include a discussion of Processing Instructions (PIs) for users who want to use XML in this fashion.

Document Type Definitions (DTD) are the subject of Chapter 3, where the authors communicate effectively how DTDs formal grammar is used to specify the structure and permissible values of XML documents. The formal DTD structure is discussed, and the principles behind writing DTDs are effectively outlined. They also discuss the problems with using DTDs.

Data modeling with XML is discussed in the next chapter, with information modeling via static and dynamic models treated in detail, and the authors carefully distinguish these two approaches. The actual designing of XML documents is given a nice overview as well as the role of schemas in XML. This is followed in Chapter 6 by a discussion of the (tree-based) Document Object Model, which overviews how XML documents can be accessed by various programs. Some helpful examples are given on how the DOM can be used to create an XML document programmatically. An alternative way of processing an XML document is discussed in the next chapter on the (event-based) SAX interface. The authors outline in detail the benefits of using SAX rather than DOM. In Appendix B the reader will find the Internet Explorer 5.0 XML DOM 1.0 W3C specifications. In addition, in Appendix C, the specification for the SAX 1.0 interface is given.

The shortcomings of DTD are addressed in terms of XML Schemas and namespaces in chapter 7. Since this book was published, XML Schemas have reached W3C recommendation status as of Nov 2000. The authors give a good overview of namespaces and schemas, with helpful examples. This is followed in chapter 8 by a discussion of how to link and query into XML documents using the XML information set, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XML Fragment Interchange, with XLST covered in the next chapter. For database applications, the authors outline the differences between relational databases and XML documents. A very detailed treatment of how XLST transforms the source document is given, and the authors compare XLS and DOM transformations. An Internet Explorer XSL reference is included in one of the appendices of the book.

More details on the relationship between databases and XML is the subject of chapter 10, wherein the authors show how to store XML and how data can be communicated between different servers using XML. The issues involved when moving data from RDBMS to OODBMS or from Oracle to Sybase, are discussed by the authors. This is followed by an interesting discussion on how to use XML as a distributed component model for server-to-server communications via XML-Remote Procedure Call and Simple Object Access Protocol.

E-commerce applications are discussed in the next chapter, with EDI and its improvement via XML. The business markup language cXML , which allows business to business electronic commerce transactions across the Internet, is also treated in detail.

The authors then finally discuss how to render XML documents more readable and pleasing for the viewer in the next chapter using the style languages CSS and XSL. The discussion is really interesting, for the authors dig a little deeper into the foundations of style languages. The discussion of style languages as rule-based languages is particularly illuminating.

The next chapter is very interesting and its inclusion is actually very surprising, namely a discussion of the Wireless Application Protocol. The authors give an introduction to the Wireless Markup Language and WMLScript. The book ends with four useful chapters on case studies for data duality, distributed applications, a book catalog information service, and SOAP.

There are many applications of XML in many different areas, such as CellML (proprietary) used in cell biology, CML (Chemical Markup Language) for molecular chemistry, IML (Instrument Markup Language) for control of laboratory equipment, BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language) for gene sequencing, and MathML for formatting of mathematical equations. I find XML an extremely powerful approach to information reporting and I am currently developing a package called NMML (Network Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in simulation and mathematical modeling of networks, and FMML (Financial Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in the modeling of financial instruments. This book, along with the W3C specifications, has been a tremendous help in the development of these applications.

For two authors who promise to shake things up a bit, cary Nelson and Stephen Watt really don't do much here except snipe at people with different politics then their own in a disappointingly unfunny heavy-handed style. They identify the stakes as being high, and promise to say much for the benefit of underemployed Ph. Ds, but in the end they seem mostly intent on settling old scores.

The book only becomes amusing (unintentionally) when Nelson and Watt go through all kinds of backbending to justify the secure positions of themselves and their close friends in the institutions--why should Stanley Fish be faulted for making so much money, they argue, when academics in the sciences or law, or prfoessional athletes for that matter, make so much more money than *he* does? It seems as if its other people's privilege Nelson and comapny want to put an end to--not their own.

I picked up _Academic Keywords_ during the 2000 meeting of the American Historical Association. It looked intriguing (when's the last time a book with "dictionary" in the subtitle had a glossy depiction of Satan on the cover?). Not one to judge a book entirely by its cover, I flipped through _Academic Keywords_ and was overcome by the feeling that I had better buy it. I am so glad I did. Remember Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"? I feel as if I have seen the sun, and now I want to shout in the "cave" of higher education, "Read this! React! Refuse to be assimilated into the corporate university!"

For the past two years, I have heard fellow graduate students in the humanities and the social sciences moaning about the job market, university administration(s), health insurance, and what a raw deal teaching assistants get. I hoped they were overstating things, but Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt backed up the litanies with not only further anecdotal evidence but with facts and figures. I challenge all undergrads going on to graduate school, all graduate students, all adjuncts, all untenured and tenured full-time faculty, and all university administrators to read _Academic Keywords_.

Grad students, it's time to organize, unionize, and refuse to allow ourselves to be exploited. Full-time faculty, it's time to refuse to profit from the exploitation of your students and colleagues. It's time to break the codes of silence and complicity with university administrations. Sure, scholars stay in academia because we love our disciplines; we're not in this for the money. However, as Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt argue, one cannot eat prestige and drink respect.

Anyone who has ever experienced the uniquely sado-masochistic experience of graduate school--especially in the humanities--who has ever dreamed of becoming a (tenured) professor only have those hopes dashed...this book is for you! It sheds light and helps you at least understand the nature of the beast (no pun intended). While you're reading this, try see if you can an EXCELLENT pair of student documentary films that make nice companion pieces..._University, Inc._ and _Subtext of a Yale Education_. They were part of the so-called McCollege Tour this past year and the brilliant student filmmakers (one of whom I met in person) were very well aquainted with Cary Nelson & Michael Berube and their sharply critical books about the state of modern academia.

Basically, a typical grad student's chances of landing a secure assistant professor's job at a major university is about the same as your typical college baseball player joining the major leagues after school...more than likely this person is going to stay in the minor leagues forever...translated to the academic analogy that means endless, untenured/temporary lecturer/instructor positions, jostling between several teaching gigs at different junior colleges, etc, living at near poverty level in the process. The light Nelson sheds on this reveals injustices that are truly scandalous...and you thought public school teachers aren't paid enough! (They aren't--but compared to the peons of Higher Ed...)

I laughed very hard (and often bitterly) reading this book and got my monthly fix of moral indignation. As someone who attended grad school at Rice University, I can definitely relate. The president of Rice recently issued a manifesto that essentially argued for running the university like a business. Funny, I thought a university was an institution of higher learning, not a business... Cary Nelson elucidates very effectively the coming prominence of the "University, Inc." mentality among university administrators...

I came across this book last summer when I was in Stratford, Ontario, attending their annual Shakespeare festival. I had just seen Henry V so this title caught my eye. A glance through the table of contents made me think this book might be a real eye-opener. Unfortunately, I ended up being a bit disappointed.

Sutherland and Watts take turns addressing what they call different "puzzles" in various Shakespearean plays. The problem is, except for the rare exception, most of these questions can be answered in various ways depending on how the play is performed. For example, is Malvolio vengeful or reconciled at the end of Twelfth Night? Or, does Bottom actually sleep with Titania in Midsummer Nights Dream? In both cases the ultimate answer is, it depends on how you play it. There is no one answer fixed in the text.

Even questions that seem like they should have a specific answer like, who killed Woodstock in Richard II?, are given waffling answers. There's simply no way to know. Again, the ultimate answer will lie in how the play is performed. Different companies will lead their audience to different answers depending on what they decide to focus.

Ultimately, this book has value in the sense that it points out what some of the issues are with various plays. On the other hand, the writing here is not very dynamic. The authors rarely take a position and, when they do, they approach it so weakly that they do not inspire a response in the reader. Perhaps the authors felt that they didn't want to provoke any controversy with their readers but, if they had, it might have made for a more readable book.

Shakespeare wrote plays that were to be seen only as performances before live audiences, running around two and a half hours, on a rather small stage. And he probably wrote pretty fast. Are the numerous inconsistencies (or apparent inconsistencies) one finds in the plays genuine errors of oversight, deliberate toying with the audience, unavoidable given the physical limitations of actors and stage, or part of some grand artistic design? For any given play, the answer can be any or all of the above.

The authors discuss about 30 such "glitches," and seem to derive most of their fun from summarizing how various Shakespearian commentators (few distinguished for intellect) have dealt with the glitches over the past 350 years. Sometimes, the authors appear to me to be deliberately obtuse about an issue, perhaps because they had some trouble finding as many as 30 genuinely puzzling glitches to comment upon.

One comment I have about the whole matter, which the authors do not make: Shakespeare's intellectual and artistic depths seem virtually boundless, and every seeming inconsistency might well have a reason for being other than carelessness or a schedule that didn't allow complete revision. The authors are aware of this, even when they don't state it explicitly.

Among the questions discussed: Why does Shakespeare's Henry V during the battle of Agincourt twice order all French prisoners to be slaughtered in cold blood, yet have "full fifteen hundred" prisoners "of good sort" left after the battle, not to mention a like number of "common men"?

Why does Juliet say, "Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore (why) art thou Romeo," when the problem is that he is a Montague? Why do so many of the plays end with nothing resolved, everything hanging in suspension? [Notorious examples are Troilus and Cressida, and Love's Labour's Lost. The answer here is probably, oh say can you see, a sequel being demanded by audiences.] How is Desdemona able to deliver several lines of dialogue after being strangled or smothered by Othello? How can King Lear be more than 80 and Juliet only 13? And so on.

Some of the answers were fairly obvious to me, although apparently not so to the authors. Juliet falls in love with Romeo when they are both in disguise, and it is the revelation that he is who he is that is upsetting. He could be referred to as Romeo, Romeo Montague, or Montague, and the sense would be the same. The action of Richard II would cover 30 years or so in real time, yet the performers would have looked the same and worn the same costumes throughout the play, so Shakespeare has the characters proclaim themselves as "lusty, young" in the early scenes, and having "worn so many winters out" in the last scenes. Further tipoff to this necessary compression is that where ever the dialogue would naturally refer to "years," it instead refers to "minutes" and "hours." As the authors put it, Shakespeare has invented "Warp Time."

The book is a great pleasure to read, and will greatly deepen your knowledge of Shakespearean drama, and your viewing of any Shakespearean film. Highly recommended.

Professional Site Sertver 3.0 from Wrox is the best book that I have read that explains overall what is going on under the hood of SS 3.0. SS is a complex piece of software that integrates with many other MS Back Office solutions, particulalry IIS 4.0 and SQL Server 7.0. The problem is you will need more information than what they give you here due to the complexity of the toolset and configurations.

Ultimately, you will be interested in buying Wrox's Site Server Personalization and Membership to get a more thorough understanding of this critical component. This is a good example of how in depth the material converage should be for each of SS's components.

Last word: This is a great book for now, but ultimately it will leave you in a pinch for more detailed information as you traverse your installation and configuration. Additionall, it lacks coverage in the design of truly scalable enterprise e-commerce architecture using SS, and the interoperability of third-party modular components, say, for instance, if you want to integrate an accounting system, or a different order fulfillment software, or transcation processing outside of MS Wallet (e.g. Transact).

It would be a huge boon to the people using this if publishers would get on the trail of the hottest technology since NT, and publish some in depth Site Server books based on the modularity of its design. Hoping to encompass all of the feature sets in a 1000 page book will leave you feeling like a kid in a candy store with only a nickle in his pocket. -ch

This book is a great reference book when used in combination with other books and documentation on Site Server. If you are developing with the SS Foundation you know the lack of documentation on the product. I recommend adding this book to your library mainly because there are very few available on Site Server.

This Wrox book is on of the most comprehensive works on Site Server. It's a great companion to Site Server membership and personalization (Wrox as well). This book gives you detailed views of code samples sites and importantly (which no other book or MS documentation does) gives you an architecture view of the asp, COM objects, the pipeline and IIS. The book covers both the Knowledge Management edition and Commerce Edition of Site Server. The case study in chapter 23 is very good and as usual Wrox has the source code on their site you can down load. If you get this book don't get Site Server Commerce edition 3.0 also from Wrox, you wont need it!