This book offers a very complete and detailed guide into conducting case study research, which is not only useful for researchers in social sciences, but also for business research. It is virtually the only book on case study research at this level and practically helps researchers that are planning to conduct case study research to avoid the pitfalls that are luring for this complex and difficult research strategy/design and which pitfalls have made the case study approach not so popular in the academic community that deals with business research.

Van de Wetering (a Dutch) is a very interesting author of quite unique "mysteries", set in a very everyday Amsterdam and also writes interestingly about his experiences with Zen Bhuddism. Van Gulik was a Dutch diplomat (before, during and after WW II), and a scientist working on Chinese history and culture who could play old Chinese instruments and mastered calligraphy - and who wrote mysteries in an old Imperial Chinese setting. Gulik is clearly one of Van de Wetering' s "heroes" and he is very aptly portraited as an interesting person living in interesting times and doing interesting things.

When you hear a Chinese speaker use a word and you want to look it up fast, this is the best dictionary for the job. I have both editions of the Oxford, but looking up words in ABC saves me time since it's strictly alphabetical. I recommend the pocket edition which you can take anywhere. It has the same entries as the desk size exactly, just reduced in size. Of course, it would be more useful if it also had an English-Chinese section. The publishers have announced that they have several other dictionaries based on this one in preparation: ABC Chinese-English English-Chinese Dictionary in both pocket and reference editions, ABC Comprehensive Chinese-English Dictionary in pocket and reference editions, Chinese Proverbs, Chinese Etymology, and others.

This dictionary uses the pinyin spelling as the method of look-up this makes all the words that sound the same appear together. Very helpful if listening to chinese.

There is a character lookup, but it just gives you the pinyin for the character.

There is now a pocket version, as far as I can tell the only difference is font size.

English-Chinese, get real! you listen to the chinese and you look it up.

BoPoMoFo? This is a PINYIN lookup system, and uses simplified text (jian ti zi).

All and all a very good book for what it was made for.

This is the best Chinese-English dictionary I've ever seen. The ABC format is an important innovation, much better suited to the student of Chinese as a foreign language. But why is there no English-Chinese section? Almost nobody makes dictionaries like that for Chinese. If you are one of those people who are the only ones that publishers of Chinese language books consider when designing their books who want only a Chinese-English dictionary without an English-Chinese section then you will not be disappointed. One other thing, it only lists characters by themself when they are used by themselves, thus if you look up a monosyllabic word you can be sure that it can be used by itself.