"The Viking Achievement" is an outstanding introduction to the culture and history of Viking Age Scandinavia. It includes information on laws, society, families, warfare, armor and weapons, archaeology, ships and trade, art, literature and poetry, religion and mythology. The information is carefully based on the scholarship provided by scientific archaeological research and modern literary analysis.

(This review is supposed to be for "Giotto : The Arena Chapel Frescoes" by Giuseppe Basile, not a book about the Vikings. I don't know why it got put under this book and not under the Giotto book- sorry!)

I'm so sad to see this book out of print, and feel so lucky to have a copy.

After majoring in Art History in college, I have a *lot* of "coffee table" art books. They are all beautiful- my favorites being the ones with more plates and less text because I knew after I read them I would be able to treasure them always. This book is my most glorious treasure for that period of my life- just gorgeous. It is comprised of almost completely all full page plates, with a very very small introduction.

The plates are all printed on very high quality, thick paper. Many fold out. The detail is amazing- you can see the texture of the paint in every print. The blues seem to come alive, and the gold in the plates literally sparkles.

I can't possibly do this book justice by my review. I am actually sitting here, trying to find ways to describe it and it's proving impossible.

I'm not a big fan of Italian art (post-impressionism is my thing), and was not required to purchase this book for school, but I found myself lusting after it. When I went to the now defunct Oxford Books in Atlanta, I used to run to the art section and sit for hours, just thumbing through it.

If you even have a small amount of respect for Giotto, you must purchase this book. The price is definitely steep, and I sort of struggled with the idea of paying for a non-necessary book for months before my family bought it for me as a surprise, but I can't tell you how very worth it this book is.

I originally bought this book for my Grandmother, who grew up on a ranch in West Texas. I loved it so much that I bought one for myself.

Watt Matthews was one of the giants of Texas ranching. This book shows and tells part of his story. Unfortunately he is now dead, after a long life. He was a living contradiction: a man from a small Texas town, who graduated from Princeton, never married, was wealthy, and slept on a cot in his bunkhouse until shortly before his recent death.

McCullough and Wilson captured this story with wonderful pictures and beautiful prose.

Unfortunately, with Mr. Matthews' death, all of the old cowboys are now gone. This book is a treasure.

The photographs and engravings reproduced in Lawrence Weschler's book are poignant and riveting. They account for the 2 stars in my rating. And David Wilson is indeed a "national treasure," as is his unsettling museum. This book, however, seems to me a snide, yuppie's-eye-view of a truly original person and his meticulously wondrous contribution to the long history of the wonder-cabinet. I was depressed for quite a while after reading it to think that this condescending and anti-intellectual account would bear Wilson's mind and seditious achievements out into the world so much more frequently than would the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself, or its own publications. People fated to live out imaginatively impoverished lives in latter-day American society could use some capacity for self-loss in the face of what is other than ourselves or what we have mastered. And--perhaps less fundamentally, but in the interests of our being less boring to each other--we could use a less pervasive culture of knowingness. *Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder* brings that possibility forward only to smother it in a kind of smugly affectionate ridicule for the person who tried to give us a chance. I was particularly disappointed in that Weschler's 80s New Yorker piece about Boggs was both intriguing and respectful, and his original Harper's piece on Wilson at least showed honest curiosity. The book is a failure for a writer who had seemed to have an interesting mission. People interested in Wunderkammern of the past, as Wilson himself is and as Weschler's irrepressible condescension demonstrates he is finally not, should look at the catalogue of Dartmouth's Hood Museum exhibit and conference on them, edited by Joy Kenseth, *The Age of the Marvelous*; Paula Findlen's *Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park's *Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1100-1750*, and Rosamond Purcell and Stephen J. Gould's glorious *Finders, Keepers: Treasures and Oddities of Natural History*. All are profusely illustrated; Purcell's photographs in the last are works of art in themselves.

This remarkable book documents, in part, the extraordinary collection of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a small storefront museum in Culver City, California. The MJT is something of an anomaly, existing in some strange territory between genuine (though odd) museum and performance art piece. As Weschler walks us through several of these exhibits, we are ultimately left in a wonderful state of suspension between credulity and skepticism, simultaneously unable to dismiss the museum as a joke and unable to accept its wonders without skepticism. At times, the experience is very much like reading BorgesÕ elaborately self-referential fictions; at other moments, it feels like youÕve wandered into a Pynchon novel in which a deeply strange and hidden world lies beneath the surface of the real.

The second part of the book places the MJT in the historical context of the wunderkammern of the 17th and early 18th centuries, those vast collections of natural and artificial curiosities that served as the first museums. The articulation of a profound sense of wonder is at the heart of WeschlerÕs fascinating book, which is in fact astounding in its elaboration of a world stranger than many found in fiction. Enthusiastically recommended.

I can't think of another book that has so altered my perception of how we process new information in a world full of unexpected and remarkable scientific "wonders." Are we easily duped? Are we natural non-believers or natural believers? Weschler really gets us going about objects found in the "Museum of Jurassic Technology" in L.A., then suddenly we're caught short - is the Director of the Museum kidding Weschler, just to prove a point about how gullible we are? Is WESCHLER making it all up? Is this book itself a curio from a "cabinet of wonder" and are we being asked to accept it as non-fiction? Does the Museum exist? (I even tried to find it in the L.A. phone book when I visited - couldn't find it. Curiouser and curiouser....does anyone out there know for sure?) This book made me want to go sit in on graduate-level classes in Museology - how do museum professionals really decide what information will go on those little cards next to the e! xhibits in museums? How easily convinced are we by the authority of those stark, compact little "explanations" that what we are seeing is what they tell us we are seeing - especially in situations where we have very little ability to check out the infomation? Can we believe the unbelievable? Should we? How do museums - how does anyone, really - manipulate the way information is delivered to the uninformed or the unconvinced? Weschler keeps his readers wonderfully off-balance about what he's describing - we are often half-way to believing impossible information because that information comes wrapped up with the bows & ribbons of an exclusive academic vocabulary. Weschler brings in the phenomena of "cabinets of wonder", brought back from the New World to the Old, full of objects which we know now to be real but which seemed marvelous and almost surreal at the time. This whole book is like a trip through a carnival House of Mirrors - you're just never quit! e sure that what you're seeing is real. Delightful and thou! ght-provoking in absolutely every way. And it's short to boot - no excuse not to sit right down and read it. Then read it again because you were so perplexed the first time through. Then give a copy to a friend.

This book attempts to provide a unified theory of software architecture, their VRAPS (Vision, Rhythm, Anticipation, Partnering, Simplification) methodology. While the basic approach is reasonably sound, in order to prove their case, the authors delve into the highly speculative field of organizational patterns and antipatterns to provide justification for their model.

The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with and overview of the VRAPS model and the last deals with a presentation of its application in the context of the situation at Allaire. Both of these sections are fine. It is the middle portion, which attempts to "prove" the validity of their model with reference to object-oriented patterns, which stretches the credulity of the reader. The authors even admit that you can skip the chapters where these patterns are presented. Putting them in only serves to detract from the other meaningful chapters of their work.

Object-oriented analysis was developed to solve abstract problems in reusable code paradigms. Previously unknown to me, a group of eager souls has tried to extend this metaphor into the realm of individual and group psychology, with no attempts to provide an empirical basis for their efforts. Whimsical patterns such as "Antigravity Module," "Drop Pass," and "Loan Shark" are relied upon to produce a catalog of objectivist modes of development behavior.

Why a methodology with no basis in psychology is supposed to answer complex issues of organizational behavior is beyond me. Could anyone conceivably apply theories of database normalization or compiler design and hope that they would help you to manage your employees better? There is a vast body serious material in the business literature which deals with these issues in the proper context, and I see no evidence why adding a layer pseudo-scientific organizational patterns to the analysis can do anything but to add confusion to the problems.

If you want a pop psychology approach to managing behavior in a development environment, a book such as "Dynamics of Software Development," by Jim McCarthy provides a very entertaining and enlightening approach to the problem. If you want an exposure to serious software architecture methods, a tome such as "Software Architecture in Practice," By Len Bass, et al, from the Software Engineering Institute can provide deep insight.

The authors of "Software Architecture" are highly seasoned professionals with impressive experience. I find it difficult to understand why they would take a reasonable approach and burden it with a false sense of analytical rigor based on the patterns literature. They would have had a much better book had they simply focused on the case study of Allaire in the context of the VRAPS model.

Excellent summary of the relationship between architecture and organization. This will be a hot topic as organizations recover from attempts to do without serious architecture. The VRAPS organizational principles presented are a minimal set of dymanically related principles needed to understand the architecture building capabilities of an organization.

Not quite sure what to expect when I started the book, I was pleasantly surprised. The book explores 5 principles behind Software Architecture; namely Vision, Rhythm, Anticipation, Partnering, and Simplification; or VRAPS for short. Not only will you learn these principles, but you'll get an introduction to patterns and antipatterns as well. Yet it is not a "How To" on Software Architecture.

Much of the book is devoted to VRAPS. After a few introductory chapters, each principle is defined, explained, and then illuminated with criteria, antipatterns and patterns.

Chapter 8 introduces a case study, based upon a well known Internet company. Allaire's jouney through each principle is discussed, including successful practices and warning signs.

Chapter 9 is added for completeness. It presents a case study about building and implementing a benchmark framework for VRAPS. The authors surveyed many organisations in compiling this book, and their results are published here in a summary form.

The book is rounded off with useful Appendixes. One provides a quick reference principles, criteria, antipatterns and patterns, the other is an index of patterns and antipatterns cross-referenced to principles. Overall I found the book to be well structured and well organised - and not too hard too read.

This is the third book I've read from the Software Architecture Series, and the most practical and useful so far. This book should go far in establishing a basic process for Software Architecture that is both theoretical and practical.

The chapters (10-13) on RDS made this book well worth it for me, since true client-side recordsets were integral to the suceess of a particular intranet project I was on (don't hold your breath waiting for any useful documentation from Microsoft on RDS). Some of your own experimentation is necessary as you expand out further from the RDS examples they give. They could have taken RDS a bit further than they did, but what they gave was still helpful to me. Everything they do cover is well-represented with code examples.

I kind of thought the amount of space devoted to ADO was excessive, since if you're trying to implement RDS, you probably already know much of the ADO they teach here. Some of that space would have been better used to expand on RDS a bit.

The included ADO 2.0 reference (Appendix A) and RDS 2.0 reference (Appendix B) are useful, and the sections on Oracle are helpful if your code has to work against Oracle backends.

One other note: In books like this, I rely on the index a lot to quickly get to topics I need. The index in this book is pretty bad. If you want to reference things for future use in this book, buy yourself a highlighter pen.

Bottom line, if you need to use RDS, bite the bullet (kind of expensive) and get this book. For ADO, however, you might want to look elsewhere.

I had developed 2 projects using ADO and ASP before, now I have a third. This time I decieded to get more information about this matter and bought this book which I found of great help. If you really are an experienced user you don't need this book, but if you are new or intermediate get this book, you wont't be dissappointed. It is worth the money I spent. BUY IT. I am getting all I need to build my third project.

I first bought this book for the RDS part since I've been working with ADO since it got out. I tought I knew ADO and even though I knew a lot about it, I've learned as much about ADO than about RDS with this book!

Good for any programmers working with ADO, as always, Wrox made it possible for beginners to understand the book and for experienced programmers to learn new stuff.

Another must by Wrox and I'm waiting to get a hand on the "Professional Ado 2.5 Rds Programming With Asp 3.0" that should be coming out soon.

I bought it and have made some of the recipes. I'll end up making them all but so far I know this much...
- The rice recipe, which I followed very closely, was not very good. Did they really want the onions to go into a puree?
- The chicken recipe has as a key ingredient a can of Las Palmas brand Chile Coloarado. Does your grocer carry it? You might want to check. I have checked several stores and they don't, including two mexican groceries. I did a quick online search and so far haven't found it there either. If your grocery doesn't stock it, you are going to have have to make up something else here or skip this recipe.
- Which would be too bad because of the extremely limited number of recipies in this book...a couple for salsa, one for rice, one for beans, one for chicken (which may be useless), one for beef, one for lamb, and a few misc. strays, for guac etc. Almost no variations one any of them. I didn't know when I ordered it just how tiny the book is.
- I don't think it's written or edited by anyone who has a lot of cooking experience. I have found a couple of the directions fuzzy. And the recipes for burritos either don't state how many servings they make, or are made for different numbers of servings (steak 3 servings, chicken 4). If the individual recipes (rice, beans, meat) aren't coordinated according to number of servings, I have to ask myself if these guys have been using their own recipes, or just who edited this book?
- Overall, sorry to be harsh but this isn't really a cookbook, it's a tiny little book with the theme "Aren't burritos cool!" Which they are. However, a cool book about burritos would focus more on how to make great burritos, rather than on jokey stuff about taqueria decorations and signage. The other reviews don't ring true to me, having used the book. Skip this one. The Bayless books have a lot of good rice, bean, meat, and salsa recipes that are great for making burritos, and I'm finding them quite useful (clear recipes, and tasty).

Full of really interesting information not only about burritos themselves, but about any subject that can in any way be related to burritos - . And it's written in a very witty, intelligent, and bright way that makes for laughs on every page.
You'll like it -

Outstanding. "!Burritos! Hot on the Trail of the Little Burro" is the perfect gift for the burrito lover in your family. Much like a burrito, it's packed with a little bit of everything: burrito folk lore, history, recipes, restaurant reviews; just about anything one could ever hope to know about this terrific food. All written with sharp humor and keen insight. Plop yourself down on the couch with this book. You're certain to learn a little something, laugh quite a bit and of course, get very hungry.

I want to start my review by saying, don't judge a book by its cover or its title for that matter. Although the Condor's Shadow
speaks very little about the Condor, it does symbolize the species of the United States that have disappeared or have become endagered. But to put it blunty, I was quite TICKED, because I was lead to believe that the book was about the Condor and his shadow! The book's overall entertainment level was low, but it was a real eye opener, no doubt. It explained the impact of humans on the environment and how fragile wildlife is to the world. All and all this book put fourth a whole lot of knowledge about the environment.

I read this book for my AP Environmental class in high school. I thought this was an easy book to read. It talks about the loss and recovery of wildlife in america. It is divided up into different sections for example the east, mid-west, west, and the coastal regions. Condor's shadow can easily be used in research projects and papers. In the back of the book is a handy notes, lit cited, and index sections making it easier for further research. The author does not seem to write with any bias and keeps his point of view until the end of the book. I would recomend this book for both nature lovers and students.

David Wilcove takes the reader on a tour of biodiversity loss and renewal throughout the United States. Each chapter focuses on a region, highlights the unique environmental problems of that region, and comprehensively addresses the extinction of vertebrates in that area. He also showcases those (sadly few) species that have flirted with extinction but which are now on the rebound. The book is both amazingly easy to read and thoroughly researched. Happily, the details of the research are tucked at the book of the book so they don't interrupt the flow of the tale, but are available for to the most exacting reader. Wilcove's passion as a birdwatcher shines through and his personality manifests itself on every page. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the state of conservation in the US.

Ike is a good role model for Mr. Ambrose, or anyone else. Until recently there hasn't been a lot of good, unbiased information on the Eisenhower the man. Although this tape is informative & entertaining it doesn't give you that. He talks in glowing terms on the inner Ike, his integrity, respect for subordinates, sense of humor & decency. Ambrose says Ike was no paragon of virtue but he doesn't believe that. Ike was a segregationist & women's rights were foreign to him. These faults & others are passed over lightly. If your only source of information on Eisenhower was Steve Ambrose then you would think Eisenhower was a good & great man. By the way I think so too.

Ambrose edited the Eisenhower Papers project for many years and finally turned his talents on writing a large-scale biography of Ike. In this project Ambrose lectures for one hour on his favorite hstorical topic. The result are mixed.

Ambrose has always been blatantly biased in Ike's favor and makes no bones about it. His first words are, 'Dwight Eisenhower was a great and a good man," which is undoubtedly true, but a biographer should take more pains to disguise their own feelings. There is very little criticism of Ike in Ambrose's work, which borders on the hagiography. Perhaps a bit more of Harry Truman's invective towards Eisenhower could have infused this tape.

Still, Ambrose is a wonderful writer and his works are always fun to read and informative. This is interesting listening even if it is a completely uncritical examination.

This one hour lecture by Ambrose is excellent. It provides a brief overview of Eisenhower's outstanding character. Ambrose also deals effectively with some of Eisenhower's lapses in character and leadership. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Eisenhower.

This is a well written and highly imaginative tale of what happened to Cinderella's coachman after he was turned back into a rat. Unfortunately the story is dark almost to the point of becoming a horror book. If the truly dark, grim fairy tales appeal to you, you will love this book. I like mine a little lighter.

"The Coachman Rat" begins like a Cinderella story, except it's told from the rat's point of view. He's turned into a coachman one night and given the name Robert so a young scullery maid (Amadea) can attend a prince's ball in style. He was given just that one night as a man, but it was enough to convince him he must remain human.

So, after the spell was broken, Robert went in search of the "godmother" to have her change him back. He doesn't find her until a very pivotal scene when Amadea is condemned as a witch for speaking to animals (Robert) and invoking demons (the "godmother"), and she and her husband (the prince) are killed by a mob in public. It's one of my favorite parts of the book and puts an interesting, realistic twist on the traditional Cinderella story.

Robert does get transformed back into human form, but he's tormented by his growing hatred for man and seeks revenge for Amadea's death by organizing an army of rats like the Pied Piper.

The story has no sex or graphic blood and gore, but I don't consider it a kid's book. I would recommend "The Coachman Rat" to anyone who likes darker fantasy / fairy tale stories with animal characters, particularly rats. It's very entertaining and will make you think afterwards. The ending is also appropriate considering the rat's stigma during the Middle Ages.

The Coachman Rat goes past the fairy tale of Cinderella and shows in historical perspective what would probabably have happened to many of the major characters. Cinderella and her prince are set up as tyrants and consorts of witches, leading to overthrow and death. The story of the vengeful rats retaliation is also historically based and adds a great twist. Highly recommended for young adults and adults alike.