Graham white has collected a fine Scottish edition of Muir's mountaineering essays along with appreciative essays on muir as a mountaineer by Arthur W. Ewart, Francis P. Farquhar, Ken Crocket, Samuel hall Young, and Aubrey haines. This edition serves the needs of readers in the British Isles since my own edition of Muir's Mountaineering essays was not readily available on the other side of the Atlantic. In his introduction, White explains that "it is equally clear that in the boldness of all Muir's solitary ascents, it was not the mountain which was conquered, but the limitations of self which were transcended. White expresses grave concern about the trashing of mountains by countless hordes of people in the late twentieth century whose sole purpose is to "bag another peak." He admonishes us with a forceful statement: "If we are to sustain the world's fragile mountain environments through another century of recreation and tourism development, the challenge is for the climbing, and hill-walking community to emulate John Muir's example by adopting a far deeper ethos." Though some of the essays White collects are a bit duplicative, overall Graham White's new collection makes for a very good read.

The book does a good job in describing the problems and solutions germany had in refueling u-boats out on patrol but unfortunatly the text is very dry and their is little personalization of the u-boat commanders and crews mentioned in the book. This book is not recommended for the average reader who is looking to read an exciting account of u-boat warfare. There are better ones like Iron Coffins, U Boat Commander etc. The book is recommended for the reader who has a great interest in u-boat tactics and this paticular part of germany's war at sea. The book does have several interesting photos of subs refueling at sea.

Taken as a historical account of Hewitt's confinement with the Nootka, the book is rich in anthropological data. Under obvious duress Hewitt nonetheless maintains a British calm to his plight and his detailed descriptions shed light on an enigmatic people. But what I found more interesting was Hewitt's personal transformation as a result of his separation from the civilized(?) world. I doubt Hewitt admitted it even to himself, and I leave it to the reader to determine, but in the later years of his life, which culture did John Hewitt feel his spirit was at it's happiest?

This book is a good introduction to the problems and joys of owning a wood. There are very few books in this area and this one was a welcomed insight. There was however very little technical information. This book was a contributing factor to buying a wood of our own.

Ignore the hype. This is poorly written and just plain dull..

This book had both good and not so good chapters. The information shared from scientific studies of whitetail deer habits was very useful to me. The chapters on the whitetails eyes, nose, and ears were quite entertaining, particularly information on the use of scents which addresses attractants and the ability of some attractants to actually repel deer if not used properly or if used in the wrong environment. Bowhunter's will quickly see why the book is outdated because the compound bow speed cited by the author is around 230 feet per second -- they are now over 300 fps which makes some of the discussion about a deer "jumping the string" irrelevant. But the information could still be useful by simply updating the speed figures. I have been hunting whitetail deer for over 20 years and this book was a great refresher. However, some of the previous comments about some dull chapters or some sense of commercialism have merit. At any rate, I don't feel like I wasted my money and will use some of the information on this year's hunt.

The first, second, and third chapters are very important to any serious deer hunter. Weiss has shown great insight on what keeps this animal alive. Keen eye's can spot any movement, a nose that can pick up sent 10,000 times greater than man's, and ears that can detect and pin point sound from any direction. Weiss has also given helpful information concerning maps, and were to purchase them so you can focus on food sources, traveling patterns, and bedding areas for whitetale deer. However I must add this personal note: I have found a more informative book for hunting, using scents, and scouting deer habitat. (Southern Deer & Deer Hunting, by Dr. Larry Weishuhn & Bill Bynum.)

This book is the worst of John Nunn. He can churn stuff out that is dry as sawdust. Perhaps the ultimate chess geeks can appreciate this. But I swear a computer could be writing this book. I have tried and tried again to read his books and they bore me into such a stupor that I contemplate giving up chess. On the other hand, this guy is a genius for getting GAMBIT up and running, and his Understanding Chess Move by Move is actually written by a human being! Having said all that, you should realize that I am not commenting at all on the substantive merits of this book--I am just saying, it is strictly technical stuff for hardcore chess geeks. There is NO personality here.

This book is probably most useful for players with ELO ratings above 1700.

When I was a Class C player I had a difficult time understanding the Sicilian defence. Black neglects development, and plays a move that immediately weakens d5. Nevertheless I found that a lot of my losses were indeed to Sicilians.

This book helped considerably to fill the void in my knowledge. Nunn gives an overview of each major variation (including some lesser played sidelines) and indicates the corresponding plans for White and Black. He backs up this discussion with game examples as well as some fairly deep analysis.

The book is not perfect. By trying to cover all major variations in one book, Nunn obviously sacrifices depth of analysis in some lines. For example the chapter on the Dragon variation could have used more depth. On the other hand, the Dragon variation alone has been the topic of entire books, so one can't fault Nunn entirely here.

Nunn's writing style is clear and concise and for the most part his analysis is objective. The book is easy to navigate and the binding is fairly sturdy.

The main benefit of studying this book is that one builds confidence in meeting the Sicilian defence. Although detailed analysis is given, inevitably the book will miss some lines that the player will encounter. Thus, the ideas behind the variations and the confidence to play the open sicilian are what I really gleaned from this book.

A good effort by Nunn. Not for beginners though. Additionally, the 3rd edition is out so I'm hoping that the third is as good as the 2nd.

After watching the movie which I enjoyed. I bought the book thinking it would be just as good if not better. Boy was I wrong, the book was horrible. I could barely finish reading it. This is one case where the movie is much better than the book.

After reading the review of this audiotape from Audiofile, I was disappointed I had purchased the cassette set - even used, thinking it would be a huge dud. I am not generally a Morgan Fairchild follower anyway, so I was doubtful. I went ahead and gave it a listen. No doubt readers at familiar with the big screen version of the book "Single White Female" which appears endlessly on cable stations and was quite good the first two or three times it played. The film followed the basic plotline of the novel but the two versions part company at approximately mid point and I found the audiobook thoroughly engrossing. Writer Lutz and reader Fairchild play Allie Jones as a much tougher, more aggressive woman and so the resulting weakening and final deterioration as her life is taken over by her strange flatmate is much more dramatic and horrifying. More than the film, the book has a Hitchockian texture to it as the body count (and the question as to Allie's guilt or innocence in those murders) is more intense. The basic differences I feel I can reveal without ruining this version for potential readers concern the detailed framing and subsequent arrest of Allie as well as greater involvement in the story of Graham the neighbor who hears more than he should while putting an ear to the duct work in the apartment above the SWFs. The last quarter of the book is a well-paced and exciting side story excluded from the film. It's just a thriller, and a "beach read" at that but listening while driving home one night, I got plenty of goosebumps. And so will anyone else who ever had to live with a roommate they thought was hell.

It's a breezy read, which is pretty amazing, given the number of obscure details that Shimomura feels compelled to share, such as his lunch menu. Still, when you team up an experienced author with a brilliant subject matter expert, it shouldn't be a surprise that the result is something which demands attention.

The definitive story of Kevin Mitnick has still not been told--this is an interesting story, but it is hardly conclusive. Furthermore, given the author's attitude--he's got an ego a mile wide--it's difficult to accept everything in this book at face value. Certainly, Shimomura and Markoff had every incentive during their journey to work towards creating an exciting story. A critical reader must consider the possibility that they manipulated events in order to increase sales of their expected book. It is certainly possible that this did not happen, but how can you know?

A greater understanding of what Mitnick represents is important in developing an ability to think in useful information security ways. He's become such a cultural icon--a criminal genious in the eyes of one side, and a victimized innocent on the other. Neither of these simplistic views is accurate. I believe that Mitnick probably is a genius, but not in technical terms. He's truly one America's great con-men, and his story teaches us a great deal about how gullible normal people can be, and how easy it is for a smooth-talker with selfish motivations to manipulate normal people. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from a study of Mitnick, although the writers of this text provide minimal assistance in helping the reader draw useful conclusions about the story. They are much more concerned with showing how incredibly clever Shimomura is, purportedly tracking Mitnick from ISP to ISP across the Internet, and eventually right to his doorstep with a junior G-man RDF unit.

A Mitnick story that I believe is much more balanced is Jonathan Littman's book, "The Fugitive Game : Online With Kevin Mitnick," which is unfortunately out of print. While Littman's personal relationship with Mitnick--Mitnick apparently just likes him--also should be a datapoint in your evaluation of what actually happened, I think he takes care to make any potential bias clear, and to avoid it.

Littman raises some interesting questions about Shimomura. I summarize my feelings about the purported Mitnick attack on Shimomura like this: 1) Shimomura makes it widely known that he has software on his Internet server that is of interest to hackers. 2) He leaves an incredibly obvious security hole open on his Unix server that any Unix newbie would have known to plug. 3) He sends the syslog (system logging) data to another host, which just so happens to be REALLY TIGHT. If he's capable of capturing syslog records in such a secure and non-compromisable way, why did he leave r-services running on the server with the source code? We will probably never know if he actually created a honeypot with the intention of entrapping Mitnick and writing a book about it, but what he did was fully consistent with such a plan. Fascinating, huh? I guess you'll need to read the book to make up your own mind, but if that is what really happened, how do you feel about subsidizing it through reading the book?

We'll also never know if Mitnick was really the one who hacked into Shimomura's Sun box using a technique that was previously considered theoretical. Somebody did, and Mitnick certainly was aware of it, but I personally don't believe that Mitnick is technically capable of writing such hack code himself, and I'm not sure that he was the one to perform the exploit. The best description I know of this exploit is found in Stephen Northcutt's book, "Network Intrusion Detection."

So it is an important story that can help you develop a better understanding of Internet security, and both security experts and non-specialists could benefit from having a realistic view of the significance of Mitnick. For the time being, this is the most detailed book available, and as an autobiographical account of one the participants in Mitnick's takedown, the book will always have a certain historical significance. But be an especially critical reader with this one. Think through the motivations of the authors, and consider the possibility that Mitnick is a genius at social engineering, but only an average technician. If that's the case, then what really did happen? Read Shimomura's account, and make up your own mind.

I really enjoyed this book, and found it very quick and easy to read. The only thing that kept me from giving it a "10" was the never-ending deluge of trivia about Tsutomu Shimomura's life, and his disdain for everyone he meets.

I liked having the technical details included. Far too many books about computer crime include every gory detail of dumpster-diving and skim lightly over what happens on the computer. After all, people reading these books are likely to be computer people!

As an author myself, I understand the need to promote yourself. I don't understand the need to pepper the book with the minutia of your day-to-day life, and I'm sure my readers couldn't care less what I eat. I certainly hope that in the future, Shimomura learns to keep his self-promotion on the dust jacket, and to control his obvious contempt for everyone he works with.

All in all, I'd recommend this book. It has much better technical information than Jonathan Littman's book about Kevin Mitnick and provides a much different slant on Mitnick. If you're really curious, read both.

Shimomura was a teen physics prodigy in Physics and Computers and has now ended up as one of the world's leading experts on computer security.

He's also a ski-bum so he's not all that bad :-)

This book details the story of what happened when the "world's most wanted hacker", Kevin Mitnick, payed an uninvited visit to Shimomura's computer and then taunted him about afterwards. He lived to regret it.

Shimomura is a curious mix of characteristics. The arrogance and show-off nature of his character are offset by his very real achievements, some natural goofy charm (especially the relentless California slang) and in the end this reader was left with admiration for his skills, jealousy of his career and a certain sense of relief that I never got into computer-cracking in the first place.

Unix fans will delight in the Unearthed Arcana displayed by Shimomura and I suspect one or two victims of computer crime may have scribbled down the odd technical note when reading his descriptions of the cyber-forensic investigation he performed on his violated computer.

There is even a certain amount of philosophy which adds depth but is not too pretentious. Shimomura names his computers but makes it clear that that is simply pragmatic, they are not his friends and he prefers people to computers. He also thinks people should not share a room with the moving parts (disk drives, fans etc) and so banishes the boxes to the cupboard and allows only the keyboard and monitor into his presence. As I sit in the white noise hell of my office I sometimes wish my elders and betters felt this way.

The story has some amusing twists and turns but is not as satisfying a story as The Cuckoo's Egg. On the other hand it is bang up-to-date and the book is accompanied by it's own web site.

I enjoyed the book and it's recommended reading for anyone interested in computer crime.

It is a shame to give this book a "Professional" title - it is rudimental in every sense. I can't even call it a rehash of the manual, because MS documentation is much deeper.
Book is un-inspiring and wriiten in a very bad language.
In general, I see Wrox sliding down on my scale, while Microsoft Press shining. Just try to compare this "Professional" book with Charles Petzold's "Programming Windows with C#"!

Ill-conceived and rushed into print

Wrox sure knows how to put together a beautiful looking book: the dazzling red color of the book cover contrasting with the bright yellow, shadowed titling shows that someone has done their homework on how to attract a reader to a book shelved alongside dozens of other similarly-titled books. Open up one of their books and you'll find a beautiful layout with gorgeous typography employing carefully chosen fonts for the various types of information being conveyed. Their books are chock-full of professional looking diagrams, tables, and screenshots that just suck the beholder into thinking that this must be some excellent book.

Sigh...if only the cosmetics reflected the contents. I know people who buy almost every Wrox book published, yet who express their disappointment time and time again because of a host of shortcomings common to so many of them. Talk about finding the sizzle irresistible regardless of the quality of the meat! "Professional Windows Forms" is a perfect example of a wonderful looking Wrox book that is just plain annoying when you get down into it. The book is supposed to teach you how to program with Windows Forms in the .NET platform (standard thick-client Windows programs). The book does cover all the bases, you can't fault it for that: there is a really good introductory chapter on the .NET framework itself, a fair overview of Visual Studio.NET, a good chapter on event handling (critical for Windows programming), how to connect controls with data from a database (something new with .NET), all the standard Windows controls (buttons, lists, trees, toolbars, menus, whatever), dialogs (modal vs. non-modal) and standard windows, common dialogs, GDI+, a chapter on debugging Windows Forms, even a chapter on localization (internationalization.) The book has all the usual Wrox shortcomings: a host of typos and misspellings, half the examples don't work, the source on the web site does not match the source in the book, sometimes the bugs are in the web site source, sometimes in the book, often in both, class and procedure names differ between the web site source and the book's printed source (so searches often fail), there is inconsistency in the presentation of material from chapter to chapter (because in this case there are eight different authors, which is actually below average for the "Professional" series Wrox books), and there is a lack of focus on the topics presented. There are a couple of extremely elementary chapters that seem completely out of place in a "Professional" series book: "Inheritance and Other Important New Language Features," and an insultingly elementary chapter on interface design (what's a button for, etc.). There are also some topics that may be interesting in themselves but are only marginally related to Windows Forms, such as "Components and Reports." This book is more like a grab-bag than simply Windows Forms. It even touches (but JUST touches) on building web pages with ASP.NET.

All that aside, the thing that I find most annoying about this book is the language mix used to teach the Windows Forms .NET classes. Three fourths of the examples in this book are in VB.NET, the rest in C#. Personally, I don't think any book purporting to instruct us about .NET classes should be using VB.NET, because the prolix and convoluted syntax of this horribly ugly language stands in the way of us clearly seeing what is going on with the .NET classes themselves, the actual topic under discussion. C# has far superior didactic power for this purpose, since it is concise and clean and lets the workings of the classes shine through transparently. A case could be made for saying that the only .NET books that should have VB.NET code in them are books whose main purpose is to teach VB.NET (it will be a detriment to the industry if this language catches on, but that is another story). But to mix VB.NET and C# in the same book, where there is not a total duplication of code for both languages (as some .NET books do), well this is simply egregious. Up to now, all serious Windows programmers, to whom presumably this book is addressed, have used either C with the Win32 SDK or C++ with MFC (or ATL). The natural language for this book's audience is C#, not VB.NET. To burden this audience with VB.NET for exposing the Windows Forms classes is an affront. Then to tease us with a little C# in an occasional chapter, especially when follow-on chapters later in the book are then presented in VB.NET, is a terrible frustration and road block for learning the actual topic at hand. Why cover up the meat with this mess of a language when it is so much more natural to expose it in C#? What was Wrox thinking? Especially nitty-gritty code like illustrating GDI+ you'd want to look as clean as possible, but they chose to write this intense chapter in the muck of VB.NET!!! Oh, how I wished I'd waited for "Programming Windows with C#" by Charles Petzold, which only just now came out. Unfortunately, "Professional Windows Forms" was the only game in town at the time I bought it and I did not look at it close enough before I brought it home and started getting into it, being suckered into it by its wonderful cover and smart typography. Oh, the price we sometimes have to pay for being early adapters!

With practically every book on .NET focusing (screaming ?) on Web Services and ASP.NET, this book is a welcome addition to those like me who write classic applications .. this book has been written wrox-style, with several code samples and a logical progression of content .. since this book has been published before VS.NET release, one can run into minor problems in running the code with the release version of vs.net.. but if you are brave enough to venture into VS.NET, then you should be brave enough to modify and compile them in the release version. Each new control in the toolbox has been discussed in the context of a project .. inheritance has been covered well with good samples .. chapter on components/reports is very new and helpful as these are new to the toolset of the .net programmer .. a comprehensive chapter on deployment will come in handy for those of us who deal with deployment as well ..case study at the end of the book is right-on-target in putting windows forms piece of the .NET into action .. since the title does not refer to either vb.net or c#.net, the code samples and discussions are both in vb.net and c#.net ..

again, with all the hoo-ha about web services and asp.net, classic applications are renegated to the back-burner .. but after one installs vs.net and tries to write their first "hello world" program, one will have to start with windows-forms to warm up to vs.net .. this book provides a good foundation for warming-up to vs.net .. could not give a 5-star rating since security issues are not covered

Overall, it is easy book to read but you could really tell that each chapter was written by a different person. Some chapters are good but others are really poor. The end of the chapter tests were way too easy compared to the actual test. It has an incredible number of mistakes and typos especially in the calculation of subnet masking. I went round in circles and wasted so much time trying to figure out why I could never get a question correct. I think this book has a second edition that I hope is better. Avoid this book and you will be a much happier person.

OK! I know there are a lot of mistakes...especially for the beginner like me...I am really confused by this book because of its unnecessary mistakes...but, I really like the chapter 2...it's very easy to understand the ARP...IP or ICMP..However, I got confused on the chapter 5 with the wrong route table...Man, I hope it would be better when it come to the second edition!

I am using this book to upgrade my TCP/IP 3.5 to TCP/IP 4.0. I am already a CNE, NCIP, and MCSE. I'm working towards my MCSE+I. This book is a first print (or close to) of a TECHNICAL book. It will have errors! On New Riders' web site, they have a page with corrections which you can print out. I used these corrections as I went through the book. The CONTENT of this book is great and on target. I give four stars because I know from my past education, experience and my knowledge of what is expected on the exam that is book is key! Minus one star for the errors which DON'T affect the content due to the corrections page, but hopefully will be gone in the next print. MCP Magazine also did ratings on the best TCP/IP study book and THIS BOOK WON!