I thought (and still think) that it is a good idea to write such books. Well written standard specifications (in terms of readability and immediate applicability) are rare, too often they are too dry or "academic" for immediate use in all-day programming practice (best example is the MIME specification, which stretches across several complex RFCs, which constantly reference to each other).

This is where "companion" books like this come in, providing the reader with guideance, with information about real life situations and examples. They point out pitfalls, emphasize parts of the specs that are "more important" than others, or are (or can be) implemented differently in reality.

Alas, in my opinion the book falls short of achieving this goal. It barely does more than picking (sometimes random) parts of the specs and retelling them in the author's own words.

I have yet to find a book about email that doesn't confuse its reader with acronyms. It seems there is an internal competition between authors of these books to squeeze MTA, MUA, MDA and MRA in one sentence as often as possible.

Another example of the author confusing the reader is that the text keeps mentioning gateways to other (proprietary, non-internet) mail systems, and that/how messages must be converted between these different mail systems. While it's OK to mention this *once* in the introduction, this is clearly not the focus of this book, as it is geared towards folks who write software that handles INTERNET MAIL messages, and not gateway implementors (at least this is how I interpret the book's title).

Also, quite often there is bad coverage of the real world. For example, two chapters are devoted to understanding and implementing MIME, including a lenghtly explanation of "interesting" message types like message/external-body and message/partial (both of which I knew of, but have never ever encountered in my work that includes a fair amount of mail
programming). On the other hand, the "multipart/alternative" type (which is very common in today's email world - ever got a message from Amazon.com?) is barely mentioned at the very end of the MIME discussion.

All in all, it's a good idea from O'Reilly to have such a book, but the execution definitely needs polishing.

Bought this book to learn more about how email works so I could fight all the spam I am receiving. I did learn a lot about headers and how email works in general, but it didn't answer all my questions. Still, if you're looking for a general overview on email, this is a good book for the money.

This book is an excellent introduction to e-mail programming and protocols. It is as easy to read as any novel, explains everything neatly and concisely, and provides excellent examples.

This covers what a mail server does and how it works, but really concentrates on mail client-server interaction. It goes into SMTP, ESMTP, MIME, POP3, IMAP, and vCard format. The examples are clear and concise, and it includes actual code in Perl and Java. This provides the reader with excellent, platform independent ways to do what they need to do.

The writing style is excellent. One of the most fluid technical books I've ever read. In fact, all I needed was one Sunday to read the book from front to back.

The code provided is superb. It's easy to use, easy to understand, and aides in the learning process. For me, the code is invaluable. It has personally saved me countless hours of work.

Finally, this book doesn't delve in tremendous detail. It tells the reader how to program for e-mail, but doesn't go into the RFC's as much as many people would like it to. I think, however, that this is a real strength. Many technical books bog the reader down with irrelevant information. This books avoids this, but still gives the user information on how to retrieve any additional information if needed.

Though there are not many e-mail programming books out there, this is by far the best one. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

This is not a brilliant cook book. Nor is David Wood a brilliant caterer. But I'll tell you this: his chocolate chip cookie recipe is the best I've ever tried. My suggestion is get the book from the library, photocopy the cookie information, but don't buy the whole book.

Paul Woods takes a fan's approach to discussing the life and works of filmmaker David Lynch. The book is at it's strongest when describing the films and the effort it took to create them. The chapter on the 5-year ordeal that Lynch and his gang of misfits underwent in order to bring Eraserhead to the screen (which most of them felt it would never see) is as facinating as the dark, experimental film itself. Woods only falters when he tries to give us a biographical glimpse of Lynch himself. Most of what he tells us about Lynch are the speculations of others and the directors own evasive little quips and soundbites that he has used to deflect interviewers over the years. The books research sometimes seems quite painstaking but at other time Mr. Woods, a british writer, demonstrates an almost unforgivable lack of basic knowledge about America and the market for which Lynch's films are created. At times one wishes that Woods had invested in a map of the U.S. (he refers to Spokane as a suburb of Washington D.C., and at another point describes Washington State as being located in the American Midwest) and perhaps gave another viewing to a few of Lynch's films during his research (he mixes up the chronology of events in "Fire Walk With Me" quite embarrasingly) but, for the largest part, his insights into Lynch's craft are fully realized and well-supported. The more a person knows about Lynch the more this book is likely to infuriate them with it's sloppy attention to detail, but for the Lynch-novice looking for an introduction to obsessive avant-garde cinema, this book will certainly entertain and illuminate.

World of Chemistry is a good introduction for those who've never taken a chemistry class before. It goes into great detail on how to successfully do everything there is in chemistry: identify compounds, determine atomic mass, and atomic weight, etc. It should be noted, however, that the last few chapteris in the book, starting with Chapter 12 are very confusing and hard to understand. At this point, you'd probably be better off listening to the teacher's lectures, or searching for another similar book. Beyond this point (Chapter 12), the book is worthless. If you want to buy this book, I suggest that you buy it used, or wait for it to go on sale.

i'm rating this book at 2 stars mainly based on its age. it holds little value now for most unix security curious admins. however, looking through it again i realize that it hits most of the basics (at the time) well. it covers filesystem and access security reasonably well, and the example code is reasonably correct in spirit, if not always in practice.

of historical value only, not reccomended.

Nothing really new here... some nice photos but not much fresh information. Lots of rehashing of what I've seen in many other places.

NOT WORTH THE PRICE! Nice cover pictures, but This book falls short of expectations. Mostly advertising type descriptions that I've seen many times in carving supply catalogs.

In this lusty tale of cape cod's lush countryside, Thoreaumanages to do everything wrong! I give it a two only because ofThoreau's thorough description of a beaver frolicking in a pond.

In this book, David Wood exhibits a wealth of information, and leaves us no doubt of his research and knowledge. However, this information is arranged in an ambiguous, haphazard manner, which makes it very difficult for the reader to sift out specific material. He incorporates his own views into those of his references, and the outcome is a very confusing, un-reader-friendly text.

If you are intending to purchase this book as a textbook for your studies in Psychology, I strongly urge you to reconsider. There are many other texts which provide a far clearer and more concise package of information, with much less unnecessary rambling. However, if you are looking to buy a book merely for the purpose of general knowledge or interest, without having to take an examination on the topic, then this may be a suitable book for you. Still, you will need to be really determined to read this book, otherwise you will probably be defeated by its dullness and lack of clarity.

I bought this book, all excited by the title and the misleading photo, I thought it would be about the three little girls we refer to as Babes in the Woods where I grew up. Well, the setting was correct, the place and location very accurate, but aside from the story being totally unbelievable the book was too confusing and poorly edited.
Whoever published this book must not have editors working for them and if they do, they should fire them. The spelling, capitalization and puncuation mistakes are horrible! I found at least a dozen in each chapter! But that is not the worst, I can survive grammar mistakes with a good book. Unfortunately, this is a dialogue only book. There is no he said.., she said... or even "and he turned to look at her as he said...". There are no filler words between dialogue at all. Strickly talking back and forth! Half the time you have no idea who is talking or exactly how they feel, the scenes change without a break in dialogue creating total confusion especially when the scene is two dialogue sentences and you can get absolutely no feeling for the characters! I could not totally understand any of the characters, one chapter they would say one thing and the next it would be like a totally different personality for that character.
Perhaps if the writer would have had a good editor to tell him about these problems he could have saved the story. Although it was very farfetched and too unbelievable for me, it still could have been saved.
I honestly don't recommend spending as much money as they want for this book, especially when you can get much better ones at cheaper prices.
Carly