This is a hard review to write, I wish I had an option to give this 3 1/2 stars, but I can't quite give 4 and I can't quite stomach 3. This book is great if you wish to glean facts about 13th century Europeon male's point of view of the middle and Far east. There are some tales that are completely stupendous, and cannot be believed at all and then there are some great, anecdotes, a favorite of mine is one were Marco challenges the ability of Kublai Khan's empire to function using a paper monetary system, at which Polo is completely incredulous, a monetary system, everyone in the world uses today. There are some excellent recounts of native islands, unspoiled back lands and an excellent feeling for the travels of a trader that took that original silk route over 600 years ago. It's an easy read though, short chapters, and fanciful tales make it flow fast, so even if the fantastic tales annoy your need for historic fact, it's probably worth the few days this takes to thumb through.

Though after reading authors such as Edward Said I should know better, I greatly enjoyed Marco Polo's description of his travels. And I think that it is "Messer Marco's" somewhat simpleminded, straightforward, naively "Western" and "Orientalist" approach towards what he saw that makes his book so entertaining. His breathless, hyperbolic descriptions of his travels seem calculated, whether consciously or unconsciously, to give the reader a vision of a world so strange, so wonderful to the Western mind, that they could only comprehend it if they saw it for themselves. And in many ways he (and his ghostwriter) succeeds in producing that effect. His accounts of the Great Khan's feasts and huge array of riches and servants, and well as his descriptions of "strange" (usually sexual) native customs definitely strive to highlight the differences between what he sees as Eastern and Western civilization. As such, he chooses only the most spectacular and different aspects of life under the Great Khan, aspects that are not coincidentally the most exciting and interesting to read about.

Of course, Marco's evaluations and interpretations of what he sees are not to be taken too seriously, but this doesn't make them any less entertaining. Marco's outdated biases and ethnocentric, simplistic interpretations of Asian life give the book an underlying comedic effect.

For pure (somewhat trashy) reading fun Marco Polo's account of his travels is a genuine success. Of course, from the standpoint of East/West relations it has more disturbing implications. However, to fully analyze Marco Polo's significance to later Western thought about China, it's implications in the general "Orientalist" framework as laid out by Said (if you believe in that sort of thing), and how his own prejudices (slavish respect of power, extreme interest in material wealth, dogmatic Christian religious ideas) colored his account is beyond my power.

Marco Polo appertains to an exeptionally small group of historical personalities widely known on all continents. Such knowledge in the first place is based on the passing from generation to generation tales of adventurers and marvellous riches of the Asian World in the Middle Ages. To evaluate in this way of Marco Polo's book is the result of a renaissance interpretation of above all a rational text. No matter how interesting, such an image has made that text to reader of all ages over the past seven centuries, it has concealed its values: understanding of the reality and connection of numerous people and their cultures present on the extended Euro-Asian area. Colonel Henry Yule, himself a great admirer of these infinite diversities; such as geographical, climatic, ethnic, cultural and what else not, has unselfishly made available his great experience of a scientist and researcher, talent and good will in verifiying the saying of Marco Polo and presented it to the scientists and public. The summary of this extremely complex, professional and meticulous work is laid out on these 1680 pages (vols. 1 & 2). Numerous illustrations and detailed descriptions of itineraries and places from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and India, an area of abundant testimonies of great cultures; where great armies have roamed; obstinate missionaries and merchants, diplomats and spies have operated and what we called The Silk Roads, introduce the reader into the great world of Marco Polo and are a valuable source of information for everyone who intends to see these wordless testimonies and numerous fascinating landscapes of vast deserts and their oasis, mountain ranges and green valleys, where life runs slowly but with dignity as Marco Polo has seen and described it. Marco Polo and his work have been in the focus of many individual researchers and teams before and after Mr. Henry Yule, giving valuable contributions. However, for the overall knowledge, vision and comprehension of Marco Polo and his achivements, the book written by colonel Henry Yule "The Book of Marco Polo" has maintained the very top position won by its first presentation to the public in the distant year of 1871.

The reproduction quality provided by MIT Press was substandard. A new edition, with color of the extant work, is in the works for Spring 2001 publication.

This book is an edited version of the FLW Companion by the same author. Lacks the floor plans, some of the text, but adds color pictures. This man knows all the architect's works intimately, and he finds something interesting to say about each one. You may find some of the entries insignificant, like a design for an exibition or a remodeling for a shop. Spends much of each house's description on the arrangement of rooms, which is difficult to follow without the diagram that was meant to go with it. Even so, it's probably the best choice for the average reader; anyone desperate for the plans can get the other version through his local library.

This book is just what it says it is, A complete catalog of the
works of Frank Lloyd Wright built during his life time. The text for each structure, in most cases was taken from Mr. Storrer's book The FLW Companion except where new data has been added since the original publication. Each site is illustrated with a photo. Even lost or demolished works, and most are in color. In many cases new or additional photos are included. For me, the main benefit of this book is the Field Guide Maps section at the end. As clearly stated in the text the scale of the maps is compressed for ease of display, BUT the actual site locations is
so accurately shown that you can determine which side of the street the structure is on and if visable from public property.

Waiting for Mr Wright was a story dealing with a psyco-path determine to have Mr Wright. She thinks she's in love with him and she decides to go after him ! Errol Wright being a talk show host and admired by so many of his fans has a one night affair with a psychologist and author of a book called Internal Bleeding ! She has decided from that night on that they are to be a couple ! She sends cards flowers gifts and then some one begains to stalk him. He thinks it is her and talks to his long time friend Marion for help since she is a friend of Anne- Marie ! The stalker has never been caught or seen! She makes an attempt on Errol life and that of his fiancee! Even kidnapping his son . Errol assumes it's Anne-Marie ! The unbeliveable stalker is really a psyco-path of the worst kind ! While I did not find this story to be a fast moving one, it certainly was an interesting read ! One which will truly shock you in the end !!! I just could not believe it !

Anne-Marie is obsessed with talk show host Errol Wright and will do anything to get him. She won't stop until she gets her man. Mr. Wright has one woman in his life and that is Yvette. How can Errol shake this obsessive woman off of him and out of his life? That isn't all. Read the book and find out more about this twisted erotic psychothriller.

Wright's indespensible history of Syriac literature is sadly as dull as the author regards Syriac literature. Wright, one of the great ninteenth-century Semetists, originally wrote this book as as the Encyclopedia Britannica article in 1887; it was later expanded and published posthumously. It is good as a summary and should be on a Syriacist's bookcase. It is, of course, hugely out of date.

But for something more interesting, try Patriarch Aphraim I Barsoum's "Unstrung Pearls in the History of Syriac Literature and Sciences" (released as "History of Syriac Literature and Sciences" and about to come back into print in English - it is in print in Syriac and Arabic)

For more up-to-date bibliographic info, start with Sebastian Brock's bibliography in Muraoka's Syriac Grammar, following with his annual bibliographies in the academic on-line journal Hugoye.

My only complaint about this play is that Shakespeare should have had some dialogues where the characters discussed crucial history before the play opens. Gloucester (murdered or dead before the play but mentioned several times) had tried to usurp Richard's crown too many times. History itself is not sure if Gloucester died or was murdered. Bolingbroke for a while conspired with Gloucester and now sees another oppurtunity to usurp the crown.The virtuous John of Gaunt served Richard with honor and integrity and eventually moved parliament into arresting Gloucester for treason. This would of made John of Gaunt's rages all the more valid. Otherwise this play is outstanding! Richard shows himself to be capable of ruling at times, but gains our contempt when he seizes his the honorable John of Gaunt's wealth. John of Gaunt's final rage in 2.1 is a passage of immense rageful beauty. Also, Shakespeare moves us into strongly suspecting that Richard had Gloucester murdered. However, despite Richard's crime, Shakespeare masterfully reverses our feelings and moves us into having deep pity for Richard when he is deposed. The Bishop of Carlisle (Richard's true friend) provides some powerful passages of his own. I can not overestimate the grace in which Shakespeare increases our new won pity for Richard when Bolingbroke (Gaunt's rightful heir) regains his wealth and the death of Gloucester is left ambiguous. 5.1, when Richard sadly leaves his queen and can see that Henry IV and his followers will eventually divide is a scene of sorrowful beauty. 5.4 is chilling when Exton plots Richard's murder. 5.5 is chilling and captivating when Richard dies but manages to take two of the thugs down with him. The icing on the cake is that Bolingbroke (Henry IV) can only regret his actions and realize that he has gotten himself into a troublesome situation. But that will be covered in "1 Henry IV" and "2 Henry IV." We can easily argue that it is in "Richard II" where we see Shakespeare's mastery of the language at its finest.

Richard II was incompetent, wastefully extravagant, overtaxed his nobles and peasants, ignored his senior advisors, and lavished dukedoms on his favorites. His rival, Henry of Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), was popular with the common man and undeservingly suffered banishment and loss of all his property. And yet two centuries later Elizabethans viewed the overthrow of Richard II as fundamentally wrong and ultimately responsible for 100 years of crisis and civil war. Queen Elizabeth's government even censored Shakespeare's play.

Shakespeare masterfully manipulates our feelings and attitude toward Richard II and Bolingbroke. We initially watch Richard II try to reconcile differences between two apparently loyal subjects each challenging the other's loyalty to the king. He seemingly reluctantly approves a trial by combat. But a month later, only minutes before combat begins, he banishes both form England. We begin to question Richard's motivation.

Richard's subsequent behavior, especially his illegal seizure of Bolingbroke's land and title, persuades us that his overthrow is justified. But as King Richard's position declines, a more kingly, more contemplative ruler emerges. He faces overthrow and eventual death with dignity and courage. Meanwhile we see Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, beset with unease, uncertainty, and eventually guilt for his action.

Shakespeare also leaves us in in a state of uncertainty. What is the role of a subject? What are the limits of passive obedience? How do we reconcile the overthrow of an incompetent ruler with the divine right of kings? Will Henry IV, his children, or England itself suffer retribution?

Richard II has elements of a tragedy, but is fundamentally a historical play. I was late coming to Shakespeare's English histories and despite my familiarity with many of his works I found myself somewhat disoriented. I did not appreciate the complex relationships between the aristocratic families, nor what had happened before. Fortunately I was rescued by Peter Saccio, the author of "Shakespeare's English Kings". Saccio's delightful book explores how Shakespeare's imagination and actual history are intertwined.

I hope you enjoy Richard II as much as I have. It is the gateway to Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2) and Henry V, all exceptional plays.

The thing with Shakespeare histories is that almost no one reads them, as opposed to his tragedies and comedies. I don't know why that is. The histories that are read are either Henry V (largely due to Branagh's movie), Richard III (because the hunchback king is so over-the-top evil), or the gargantuan trilogy of Henry VI, with the nearly saintly king (at least by Part III) who much prefers contemplating religion and ethics to ruling and dealing with the cabals among his nobles.

So why read a relatively obscure history about a relatively obscure king? Aside from the obvious (it's Shakespeare, stupid), it is a wonderful piece of writing - intense, lyrical, and subtle. Richard II is morally ambiguous, initially an arrogant, callous figure who heeds no warnings against his behavior. Of course, his behavior, which includes seizing the property of nobles without regard for their heirs, leads to his downfall. Nothing in his character or behavior inspires his subjects so he has no passionate defenders when one of the wronged heirs leads a rebellion to depose Richard II. But Richard now becomes a much more sympathetic figure -especially in the scene where he confronts the usurper, Richard acknowledges his mistakes, but eloquently wonders what happens when the wronged subjects can depose the leader when they are wronged. What then of the monarchy, what then of England?

On top of the profound political musings, you get some extraordinarily lyrical Shakespeare (and that is truly extraordinary). Most well known may be the description of England that was used in the airline commercial a few years back... "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, ..."

If you like Shakespeare and haven't read this play, you've missed a gem.

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.

I had been looking for this book since 97 and once i found it (last month) and started reading it straightaway, I was disappointed.
The story was unrealistic and to put it plainly silly.
The characters mentioned each others names' continously during their conversations as if they were going to forget who they were talking to.

Simms never made the characters keep an argument, my meaning, 2 characters will have very harsh words with each other and then turn around and laugh and then both go to lunch.
Also Gina was supposed to dislike black men but then fell for one at the drop of a hat. He hardly gave them time to really get to know each other.
My opinion, dont waste your [$$$] or your [$$$] because it is not worth it.

While the struggle to free Namibia is over, this book still illustrates the apartheid-era view that once dictated that Namibia remain a South African colony. Maddening and inaccurate, this book is recommended only if you are interested in learning more about this discredited perspective. Now that Namibia is a 7-year old stable democracy, the views represented here have entered the dustbin of history.