This book is great for the toddler who likes to help you water the plants or the kindergartener who's growing some seeds in a styrofoam cup. Actually it's a great little book for any "rookie reader."

After neglecting her garden, Messy Bessey realizes that it's hard work to help something grow. She goes to work immediately, and she's ultimately rewarded with the "fruits of her labor." She builds self-confidence and self-esteem from a job well done.

The book encourages children to work persistently and patiently, and it might even inspire them to help you out in the garden. I recommend this simple rhyming book for any child between the ages of 2 and 8.

I had to use this textbook for a class, which you probably do to. So you probably have to buy this one. It was okay, not hard to read, but I won't be keeping it as a reference work. The authors definitely have an agenda, promoting certain kinds of nutrition over others with very little reasoning, also seems to act like a lot of alternative medicine couldn't possible work even when there are studies to the contrary. I guess it handles the rudiments of biology okay. I will be selling this when I'm finished with this semester.

Oh, and there appears to be both a hardcover and a paperback. I bought the paperback used, and it seems to have matched perfectly with the hardcover. Never even used the CD.

This book was very easy to read, I read the whole thing in a little over a week. Highly reccommended.

This book impoverishes Frederick Franck's work. It's seems to be a pluralistic work which main purpose is to convey what does it be to be human. Sadly, what the book shows us is that to be human is to be spiritual or a sort of enlightenment being. There is no place to heterodoxies or alternative ontologies in this literal world. For instance, you will not find words which can present a lesbian humankind, or atheist o radical secular human being. You just have to unveil the very essence of yourself, and just be. Multiplicity is narrowed in a only universal face, a christian-buddha face. There are some contributions which are interesting and inspirational. The best are Frederick Franck itself, Cornel West, Thomas Berry. Others are so poor that to be human is to becoming a colombian indian or a new human according to other side of the genes, its invisible moral, in other words, the gen-ethics as Muñoz Soler preaches. No sense and reductionism; to be human is to become pure. A shame! Fredrick Franck deserved a better luck in order to present his interesting, but failed idea, of a ABC program against the new barbarism. What we see through this book, is no less that a kind of pure spiritual barbarism, one who can not tolerate real differences.

There are very few books I know I will ever go through the effort of rereading. This book is one which can be picked up time and time again, for a quick reconnection to our human condition. People from around the globe with differing backgrounds offer their opinions on what it means to them to be human. The overall message of this book is one that has been heard before but few people have heeded; namely that humanity needs to relinquish greed and reconnect with its spiritual nature to allow us to realize our full potential as a species. A very difficult task indeed in our consumer based economy. The writers realize this and demonstrate that it is possible to be true to our human nature. I continue to lend this book to anyone who can appreciate the meaning and depth behind the words.

I found this spine text incredibly hard to read. I learned much more from reading other shorter texts.

I found this text easier to read than the Frymoyer. Probably the best one out there now.

This book covers a lot of the basics of what HLA is but contains holes. After reading this book three times I am still left with questions as to how to implement HLA in an application. I found the IEEE specification included on the CD helpful in filling in some of the holes in the book, but still have unanswered questions as to how to implement the HLA. The examples in the book are implemented in Java and the code is included on the CD in source and executable format, however I would have been happier if the examples were implemented in C++ as well. This is a good starting point, in the absence of alternatives, but could be better.

Agree with the reviewer about "pompous computer speak", and that the real info could be presented in about 10 pages. I have far too many docs that I need to wade through. The published IEEE standards are always available if you're having insomnia. BUT, with some motivation to get through this book, I was able to accomplish my objective: get a feel for the HLA. The included COTS RTI on the CD helped. Next I'll try the Singhal/Zyda book that another reviewer suggested.

I am at the mid-point of the book and will likely post another review when I am done. So far, I disagree with the negative reviews. The authors give the history and motivation and design decisions behind HLA. They also give many good examples, and together with the CD which contains a implementation of an RTI, allow you to get a really good feel for the important concepts of HLA by running an actual federation. One thing I will be looking for is the impact of the architecture on simulation performance, scalability in practice (as opposed to in theory), and how is HLA likely to evolve over the next couple decades.

I don't know yet whether the book is enough for you to create your first federation. If you really have NO background at all in simulation, you will still get a lot out of the first couple of chapters, plus the many references to articles written on the subject, but don't expect to find the other chapters easy. Using my background in simulation systems, I can say that HLA seems to have been very well thought out, based on real-life simulation systems, and is therefore not trivial. But that's what makes it interesting, and the book so far lives up to that.