A bit dry, this book is used to teach intermediate level officers at the USAF Air Command and Staff College the "big picture" regarding U.S. National Security. It is informative, timely, and gives a very good picture of how U.S. National Security is developed and applied.

This book was only written a precious few years ago, but it has aged an entire lifetime!

Look at "Surviving Object-Oriented Projects" by Alistair Cockburn for an updated tome.

The eagerly awaited final volume to the colossal trilogy on the youngest and arguably most charismatic of Prime ministers of Britain. Ehrman has created a volume of detail and immense interest. He has weaved together the knowledge of the period and created a mini world where Pitt inhabits. Relationships with all the major characters of the period are dealt with and brought together in this impressive refernce work. Pitt, as in the second volume does seem to flit in and out of the text too much and no real new information is brought to light. Why did he resign? What did he do during the Peace of 1801? Why did he respond as he did to the Addington administration in 1804? What was his real relationship to that government? What sort of admin did he attempt to establish in 1804 and 1805? All these questions are answered in the traditional manner- no new insights are provided. This is rather disappointing considering the huge number of manuscript sources examined. A bibliography given the size of the project would have itself have taken up a small book! However, if you would like a detailed and thorough work on the early 19th century then this is your book.

I read this book with an open mind - my only prior knowledge of Steve Wynn was that he was the guy that built the Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio - the Mirage having ushered in the new era of modern luxury casino hotels in Vegas, and the $1.6 billion dollar Bellagio having upped the ante.
That said, I can see why Steve Wynn fought so hard to prevent this book from being released. Wynn sued the the original publisher and apparently helped force it into bankruptcy.
Any reader of this book will likely come away believing that:
1) Wynn rubbed elbows with mob figures, and may have served as a front man in some of his early dealings, before he accrued enough juice on his own,
2) Wynn leveraged his money-making capacity into a large measure of control over the local and state government and judiciary,
3) Wynn is an egomaniac,
4) Wynn kicks puppies....
You get the idea. Although the book makes a fair attempt at biography, its real purpose is to be an expose'. After 350 pages, it has the effect of beating a dead horse.
Wynn may indeed be all of those things, and certainly some of the things he's accused of could result in the loss of his Gaming License - although it seems Nevada is far too invested in him to ever let that happen. I wish there was a more balanced, well-rounded account of Steve Wynn's story out there.

This book really needed to be written. It's well-documented, impeccably researched, and it's about time somebody stood up to the mighty Steve Wynn and the gambling industry. Where else but Nevada can Wynn and Governor Bob Miller state, in the libel trial on this book, that they recently spent the weekend with Michael Milken, a convicted felon, without anyone taking notice? Book readers, take note! Wynn is placing all his finances into stopping this book from printing. He has already put the publisher of this book out of business. The First Amendment must prevail, and all of us must be vigilant so we don't lose those rights to write and/or read what we please.

Contrary to your notice, this book is in print and has been since early October 1995. The book is a quick read and tells a compelling story about the rise of Wynn in the gaming industry. It's tought but fair in its description of him as a creative guy who also is a ruthless business man capable of overcoming many law enforcement investigations of his business and personal life. The author also is under fire in Las Vegas for daring to write about the most powerful man in Nevada.

Do not buy this book, and for your own good, don't even read it!

First of all, I am an experienced computer programmer, and have developed code for the Java core programming language. I have read many-a-programming book, and can tell you to stay away from this one. Why?

This book:

* is not practical
* is filled with *serious* errors - not just typos
* fails by attempting to cover too many topics
* lacks examples and good diagrams
* lacks a sense of continuity from chapter to chapter

Many of this book's chapters are written as if they were a theorem: generalizations and buzzwords that don't get you anywhere. For example:

"If a set of permissions can between them imply a permission - even if no single permission in the set explicitly implies it completely by itself - you will need to provide your own implementation of PermissionCollection." Ha!

"Because sockets are just *programming* abstractions for network protocols, the other side of the connection does not have to use them. For example, the network program on the right side of this example may be coded in an exotic system that does not use the socket abstraction. That is, sockets don't use any additional communications mechanism other than that provided by the encapsulated protocol." Gimme a break!

Some of the errors in this book are the following:

* Chapter 5's author says that java.io.InputStream's "public int read(byte[] buf, int offset, int length)" method reads the input stream starting at 'offset' bytes deep into the input buffer - skipping the bytes toward the front of the buffer. This is incorrect. The author even has a diagram and examples to complement his error. This method actually reads starting at the front of the input buffer, and reads the bytes into 'buf' starting at buf[offset].

* As if all of the previous chapters' authors' errors weren't bad enough, Chapter 9's author took me to a screeching halt and compelled me to write this whole review when he said this: " It should be noted that the java.net.Socket object returned is bound to an ephemeral port number that is different from the one the ServerSocket is listening to (most applications don't care about that port number)." Whoa! This is absolutely, fundamentally wrong. In truth, the returned Socket has the *same* receiving port number as the ServerSocket. (Otherwise the client's Socket (whose destination port number is the same as the ServerSocket's receiving port number) wouldn't know what this "ephemeral port number" is, and so wouldn't be able to send packets to the server's newly created Socket.) IP packets are demultiplexed according to their *connection* (The 2 connected sockets, i.e. 5 parameters: the common protocol, the source's IP address & port number, and the destination's IP address & port number) and according to socket specificity, not just according to the receiving side's socket.

* Wrong diagrams. p.163: The diagram is of a program's output which shows "access denied", while its caption above says, basically, "tada, and it works." p.52: This diagram belongs in the I/O chapter.

The only chapter I found to be somewhat good was the Thread chapter (and a chapter on threads shouldn't even be in a book on networking). This book also suffers from lacking continuity due to the fact that it was written by 10 authors! For instance, this book has no consistent (or good) way of listing the API's and diagraming class relations. Chapters do not pedagogically build on the previous ones. I could go on...

If you want to learn about networking using Java, then here are your prerequisites. You should learn each of these from a book which specializes in the given topic.

* Basic Java Programming including I/O and Threads
* The TCP/IP protocol suite and TCP/IP networking
* Cryptography (optional)
* Java Security

After you do that, I highly recommend the book "TCP/IP Sockets In Java: Practical Guide for Programmers". This book gets the job done at only 110 pages. Another reason I recommend this book is that it lists references to 22 other good and relevant books/documents.

If you want to learn about HTML, Javascript, Servlets, JSP, RMI, CORBA, etc., then you should find a book specific to that topic. For instance, Marty Hall's books on Servlets and JSP are great.

Just because a programming book is thick, doesn't mean it's good. The book's publisher, Wrox, does put out some good books, but this just isn't one of them.

I bought this book in hopes that it would help guide me on the path to learn Java programming. Numbering over 1000 pages by several different authors, this book does not have a very consistent feel to it, and jumps around to various subjects about Java and various networking principles. The first 200 pages would be good for a university networking class, but as for being a decent tutorial, it is horrible. This book gives little code snippets here and there, but never fully combines them into one large, solid, and useful application.

If you are looking for a book to act as a Java tutorial to networking, this is not the book for you. It is very comprehensive in some areas, and much more than many people are willing to spend in getting through sections of this book. However, if you are looking for a little more general purpose Java networking Bible, then this book might be more suited for you.

I was looking to do more than what you normally find documented in Java and this gave me the details I needed. It has a lot of network protocol details right in the book so you don't have to keep switching between a protocol book and a Java book. Although it's titled, "Beginning Java Networking" it would also benefit an advanced Java programmer interested in writing networking programs.

This book is extremely basic (and a bit age-ist). It's fine for someone trying not to look like a fool in their local community theater, but for anyone considering a serious career in professional acting, there are other books that provide a better, more comprehensive, and more practical introduction.

I bought this as one trying to return to the field after a long absence, but found "Breaking Into Acting for Dummies" to be better instead. For the basics of acting in general, Michael Shurtleff's "Audition" is the still the very best investment in a book that you can make.

This book in a compilation of the authors' little acting stories. Some of the stories have some use, but most of which don't. I have done high school shows and a few community theater shows, and yet, still found little information I didn't already know. I'm sure there are other books out there that have more and better information, but hey, if you happen to have a collection of useless acting books, go ahead! Buy it!

This book gives the reader an incite into the acting world never before offered. I highly recommend it to the beginning actor as well as the accomplished thespian. The helpful recommendations for auditioning will be of great value not only to the actor but to the casting directors and producers.

This is a pitifully researched book. Lazy. It sells disinformation.

Problem: Malone devotes a "chapter" (or whatever they were) to the supposed shortsighted quote attributed to Charles Duell, the Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899. We've all heard it: "Everything that can be invented, has been invented." Unfortunately, this is a completely bogus myth (though popular), and Duell never said anything of the sort, as even the slightest research into his life would have quickly revealed. Myth passed as truth. Lazy. Disinformation.

Problem: Malone attributes the conception of the fax machine to Jules Verne in his novel Paris in the 2oth century. He offers as evidence a passage from Verne's book: "photographic telegraphy, invented in the last century by ... Giovanni Caselli of Florence, permitted transmission of the facsimile form of any writing or illustration...". Amazingly, Malone mistook Professor Caselli for a Verne-invented fictional character. In fact, a real Caselli DID invent a working fax, a model which sent pictures from Lyon to Paris from 1865-70, starting before the publication of Verne's book. Patents for faxes go back to 1843. Lazy. Disinformation.

This is a book of interesting little stories about how smart people have tried to predict the future but failed. However, the lack of organization means that you can't really use it for a reference, and sooner or later you tire of reading the stories and try to think about the issue a little more systematically.

A fascinating account of the power of the imagination to not only predict but also create the future. An elegant writer and judicious chooser of facts, Malone takes a level-headed approach to the people he writes about, deflating and praising as appropriate. PREDICTING THE FUTURE provides a useful context for evaluating all the technological changes coming at us today

Mr. Ailsby never fails to copy data from other authors and add a fancy title that is catching and will sell. So long as the title has "SS" on it (he figures), it will sell. Don't waste your time or money on this piece of tripe!

This book is a decent introduction into the study of the SS. It doesn't have much (if any) new information and it doesn't go very deep into the subject but if you are only starting to study WWII or the SS this is a good primer (probably best suited to high school students). It also mainly concentrates on the fighting units of the SS while devoting very little space to the Waffen SS's atrocities and participation in the Holocaust. I also would have liked to have more infomation about the foreign SS units. The book has several good photographs in it.

Again, not for serious students of military history but a good start for study of the SS if you are interested in learning about WWII military units. Just don't expect too much.

This is a good book and the first I've read by Christopher Ailsby. It covers almost everything concerning the war on the eastern front 1941 - 1945. I`m thinking of aquiring Roll Of Infamy by the same author.

Christer

I've seen Peter Belesis' work around, and it is way too confusing and buggy to get any real use out of it. His Hierarchical menus are beautiful, but you never get to see one on your own site because it is so convoluted and screwy!

The book appears very comprehensive, but really needs a quick reference guide on all the elements of dynamic HTML (including scripts and HTML itself).

Dynamic Html Unleashed is a once of great DHTML books. But this is clearly not a introduction book. You should have a good HTML and javascript knowladge .

I couldn't agree more with the last two reader reviews, and would like to add a bit more. This work has two fatal flaws that undermine all of his analysis. It consistenly confuses correlation and causality, and deliberatly ignores portions of counter-arguments inconvenient to Bennett's conclusion.

Even using government funded studies, developed no doubt by Bennett's ideological kin, his defense of marijuana prohibition relies on an abusurd logical extension. First he shows that cocaine is a cause of violence. This is already a tenuous position in and of itself since he does nothing to disprove that cocaine prohibition is not responsible for more violence than the drug's pharmacological properties. The he relies on the long-defunct gateway theory to show that a lax approach to marijuana will generate thousands more violent cocaine addicts. Thus, marijuana must be thoroughly repressed. Yeah, obviously... no other way around that one.

He states with indignation that more 15-18 year olds see marijuana as relatively harmless than any time in the preceeding decade and a half. Well, unfortunately even a moral fiat from the good Dr. Bennett cannot change the fact that the perception of pot as relatively harmless is, for the most part, accurate; no matter how uncomfortable it may make him.

What about the claims that supply side drug interdiction is fatally flawed as a long term strategy? No worries, according to Body Count, since it worked in the very short run in 1992, it must be effective.

The 60% drop in casual drug use between 1980 and 1992 a smashing success, akin to saving 60% of the rainforest or preventing 60% of unwanted pregnancies? You bet, of course Bennett fails to mention that the same period saw an unprecedented rise in drug market violence, an INCREASING number of 'hard core' drug abusers, destruction of civil liberties, a mushrooming prison population, the shredding of urban America's remaining social fabric, the demonization of blacks and junkies as drug war enemies, skyrocketing quantities of preventable and drug related AIDS cases, a burgeoning culture of intolerance, and the list goes on.

To top it all off, in this book Bennett has the gall to criticize the media for not depicting the drug war as a success, when he, himself was frequently the one on national tv using fear-mongering rhetoric to drive the perception of a failing drug war.

Filled with useful information, this book blows away some of the standard liberal myths about crime - such as that "prison doesn't work" and "guns cause crime". But they also prove their even-handedness by dealing to a few standard conservative myths too However, I'd have to add that I disagree with some of the (lesser) conclusions drawn by the authors in the final chapter, particularly regarding "moral poverty" and the war on drugs. All the same, they did succeed in making me re-evaluate my position on drugs considerably. The book was worth buying for all the data in it alone, particularly the appendix with criminal histories of 40 "low-level" offenders - most illuminating! All the rest is a bonus, and it is largely clearly and cogently argued. It does have to be said that the religious viewpoint of the authors does tend to show at times, particularly in the final chapter, which will tend to put some people off (myself included!). Don't let this blind you to the many valid points they have to make, however.

So if it's not the handicaps we've imposed on cops and prosecutors, and it's not institutionalized racism, and it's not material want, then what is the fundamental cause of predatory street crime.

Moral poverty.

...[M]oral poverty is the poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible adults who teach you right from wrong; the poverty of being without parents and other authorities who habituate you to feel joy at others' joy, pain at others' pain, satisfaction when you do right, remorse when you do wrong; the poverty of growing up in the virtual absence of people who teach morality by their own everyday example and who insist that you follow suit. ...

The twin character scars left by moral poverty--lack of impulse control and lack of empathy--reinforce each other and make it far more likely that the individual will succumb to either the temptations of crime, or the blandishments of drugs, or, as so often happens, both. -Body Count

One of the more comforting aspects of conservatism is that you can adopt one set of principles--most elements of which are hundreds (capitalism and republican democracy) or even thousands (10 Commandments, Golden Rule, Sermon on the Mount) of years old, and have stood the test of time--and then stick with it your whole adult life. At any given moment several of the positions you adhere to will certainly be out of favor, but just as surely the tide will eventually turn back in your favor. New ideas and fancy fads will come and go, leaving trend-sucking liberals with their heads spinning, but you can just stick to your guns and ignore them all, secure in the knowledge that folks will eventually return to their senses and come scurrying back to the timeless virtues. This is especially the case when it comes to Crime and Punishment. Few issues, other than the equally intractable Taxation and Education, have been so susceptible over the years to "innovative" thinking and "radical" solutions as the problem of Crime. But time and again we all end up returning to the conservative mantra : what's needed are a societal emphasis on loving families and traditional morality, vigorous law enforcement, and harsh punishments.

This book then is an unsurprising call for a return to these first principles, in particular a clarion call for an effort to combat moral poverty, and, equally unsurprisingly, its policy prescriptions are currently back in vogue. Between the candidacy of Joe Lieberman and the victory of George W. Bush, religious belief is once again a central part of our national debate, morality is a hot topic, and a broad consensus has formed around the idea that faith-based institutions, with their manifest moral component, are better at delivering social services than government bureaucracies. Coauthor John DiIulio has, in fact, been named to be the coordinator of President Bush's Faith Based Initiative. And, what with now former President Clinton mired in a new scandal (which will inevitably come to be known as Pardongate) Bill Bennett is popping up all over the networks and editorial pages, getting to say, "I told you so" and preach the importance of morality in public life.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Rudy Guliani has proven that crime can be reduced and civic manners restored by relentlessly prosecuting even minor infractions. Perhaps most importantly, reforms like building more prisons, Three Strikes and You're Out, mandatory sentencing, and incarcerating even low level drug offenders, have helped to bring about a tremendous reduction in crime rates. It would seem that, in a sense, this book has been made superfluous by the very success of the ideas it advocates.

But never fear, already we hear calls to relax drug laws (many of them fueled by the new movie Traffic) amidst hand-wringing over the burgeoning prison population. Perhaps the best aspect of this book is that the authors actually go beyond just drugs and demonstrate the close connection between alcohol and crime. One of the most effective arguments of those who support legalization of drugs is the comparison to alcohol. The authors head off this line of reasoning by indicting alcohol too. You've got to admire a conservatism so fierce and intellectually honest that it's basically willing to refight some of the battles of Prohibition.

Another phenomenon we've witnessed in recent years is one of those patented psychic disconnects on the part of liberals that we conservatives so treasure, folks on the Left have actually taken to arguing that the statistics showing a drop in crime can not be right because of the size of the current prison population. Their characteristically fuzzy logic maintains that if crime really were going down there would perforce be less people in prison. This confusion over cause and effect, obvious as it seems, and the accompanying appeals to middle class white guilt will inevitably lead to an eventual relaxing of our guard and the pendulum will swing back towards leniency and permissiveness.

This book is somewhat dated now, because of its reliance on statistics and because too much of what it has to say has been adopted as public policy, but put it on a shelf for a few years and you'll be able to take it down during the next explosion in crime. Think of public policy making as a huge game of "Whack the Mole" conservatives always remain poised with the same hammer (a consistent set of ideas) and periodically have to bang away with the hammer when experimentation with liberal ideas manages to unleash a plague of vermin. Lift this book and you wield the hammer.

GRADE : B-