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The "Everything" style is to highlight certain sections as "Essentials" and others as "Facts." I can't imagine that the "Essentials" often reflect what a school teacher is going to be quizzing, let alone what serious students would call a central issue. I also notice that the "Facts" are sometimes highly unfactual ("Some scholars feel the sonnets are..."). "Facts" is a daring words to employ anywhere in the realm of Shakespeare. Hamlet could have been speaking most candidly and fittingly for Shakespearean authors: "Believe none of us!" (i.e., In God we trust - for the rest we check footnotes). On the other hand, this mostly un-documented survey does at least acknowledge many of the debates that remain unfinished about the times, the man, and his works.
Overall, it's not a bad compromise between readability and honest scholarly equivocation in a book for young bard novices. If they continue on with Shakespeare they'll have time enough to be disabused of the "facts" they've learned.
Brief introductions to each play fill out the second half the book after the first has given you chapters on Shakespeare's World, The Elizabethan Stage, Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Rivals (nine discussed), Elizabethan English, and The Sonnets/Poems.
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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 * 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 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.
* The TCP/IP protocol suite and TCP/IP networking
* Cryptography (optional)
* Java Security
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.
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If you've ever seen a Disney adaptation, you get the idea. Cheaply produced, and dirt cheap to buy. These books are found in supermarket check-out queues. And why not! If they encourage adult/child closeness in the act of reading, that's a good thing. If they encourage the independent emerging reader to "have a go", then why not?
Oh, dear, now I might as well admit I even like the PlayStation game based on Disney's barrel-chested muscleman in the cute pleated skirt! END