John Hughes Books

The book is a running commentary of Updike visiting Cincinnati, reading a few short stories, interacting with some "Updike" experts, and answering questions. Updike is honest about his appearance, he likes getting paid, although he has trouble looking anyone in the eye. The interesting aspect to me was how different critics kept on identifying the significance of his early short story, "Packed Dirt."

Some reviewers have mentioned that they found errors in the book. I'd like to point out that one of the key goals in creating Jepstone.net was to offer new releases of the example code as well as support forums for my books. Ideally, there shouldn't be any errors in a book, and I apologize for any that lurk in the pages. However, I'm committed to helping you: the forums give you an opportunity to let me know about any issues you have, and I promise that I will do everything I can to resolve them quickly.

This book is the ultimate mSQL resource. I couldn't live without it

Tthe examples put the whole book to shame, there are countless errors within the example code that prevent it from running. Some of the facts they list aren't accurate. If you must read this book get it from your local library.

The book lacks details and does not include a lot of practical examples. Much of the book is filled with countless pages of library source code that has very little use to the end user or adminstrator and should have been left out of the book and put on a CD. The August 1999 O'Reilly book (MSQL and MySQL) puts this book to shame.

I am appalled at the lack of editing this book had. I spent hours and hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and it turns out that there are blatant errors all through the book. They include double-quotes in the very first example in the book (end of chapter one) which should be single quotes, which completely rule out the example working. Any beginner who got this book (like me) will be completely lost until someone who knows what they're doing clues them in. And what is with the blatant %*&-kissing the authors do of the people who invented various things? And ack, java, WHY so much java? This book isn't useful to beginners because of the way they completely gloss over all the basic stuff (when using INSERT INTO with a date field do you put it in quotes? oh why bother telling us, we should magically know that somehow right?) and what they DO say is factually wrong. I can't see any experts learning anything here either, they just try to cover SO much it's ridiculous and they spread themselves WAY too thin. But man, where were the editors? Didn't they try to run even the simplest code in this book before printing it? Pathetic. I feel so ripped off I can't stand it. The worst book I have ever purchased.

Though I'm an admirer of the authors as journalists, they fail to step up to provide more fully-formed profiles of their many subjects. This reads like a compendium of short mini-profiles. Just as you think you're about to learn something about a subject, the chapter ends and you're onto the next personality. Better to spend the price of the book for a brief subscription to the authors' newspapers. In this case, there's more meat in the daily reportage.

I finished reading the book a while ago, and I find it gives me food for thought during this political season--particularly when I see one or another of the profiled people quoted or interviewed. Though I work in Washington, I have little interaction with the world depicted in Pennsylvania Avenue--but, having read it, I now know a lot more. We all think of ourselves as jaded, but I was really startled by the sheer volume of money that Harwood and Seib describe as flowing through the political world. They may not be partisan, but they do describe a system that desperately needs change.

If you want a wonky read but your diet doesn't allow for red meat, this is for you. These are profiles of people who make things happen from across the ideological spectrum and all judgements are reserved, which is pretty rare in today's hyper-partisan media environment. Given it's quick pace, this book might be best suited to young people interested in D.C.

Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power by John Harwood and Gerald Seib is an excellent book. It gives an overview of what politicans are really like, while including big names( i.e. Rove and Dubinstein) and not so big names( Wasserstein-schultz, although she is becoming popular)and using a bi-partisian approach. Harwood and Seib showed their journalistic skills by providing this overview for the common man and for folks who are non-Washingtonians. But, it also is a good read for History/Political Science buffs who want to have an easy read and want to learn more about the political climate bipartisian style from Washington. This book is highly recommended for all readers who may be interested in Washington Politics. BUt, it also should be on the reading list for college poli sci majors. I think this book also shows what fine writers and Washington Pols John Harwood and Gerald Seib are, and hopefully will get them to recognition they both deserve.

PROFILES is in the same vein as BLOOD SPORT and other political commentary and will be of interest to those wanting the specifics of dirt politics or who plan to compete on Jeopardy.

Both interesting and a bit scary, the book won't be a complete surprise to anyone who watches CNN. But while you might know the basic stories and names from Lou Dobbs, a few of the details and money amounts might be a shocker if you don't live in D.C.

Corruption is always interesting, and although not specifically referred to often as the subject matter, that is the main theme here. Enjoy, but take your Prilosec first.

There were some problems I couldn't solve by just looking at the solution pages of my textbook, so I bought this solution guide. I hoped it could help me because it has completed and detailed solution. However, the numbers on the guide are odds, in other words, it was formatted as "1,5,9,13" instead of "1,3,5,7". All the important problems that I had trouble with were omitted.
If you have trouble with the problems in your textbook, please don't waste $40 on this solution guide. Just go to math tutors for help.

Excellent seller. It arrived much faster than I expected.
Thanks a lot

This book is addressed for understanding of the Calculus and not for the traditional teaching that sins for the excess of formalism. It is an excellent book for who wants to understand and to learn Calculus through the application of problems of the Real World. The book also motivates the use of graphic calculators to have a better vision of the problem.

Sorry to bother you with this review. The authors of this book are distinguished professors at Harvard University (a fine school, no matter what anyone says). Professor Gleason, in particular, is a mathematician of world-historical importance. In a sense, taking lectures from Gleason is not worse than having a lecture from Laplace or Poincare or any of the other great lights of mathematics. I confess that I haven't seen the book or held it between my hands, but I couldn't just leave it here with only a one star review of a disgruntled student. Really, the book has to be better than a single star if Gleason even held it in his hand once.

This is a magnificant calculus book. It is aimed at students in business, the social sciences, and the life sciences. This is done by first the examples and problems. But perhaps even more important the wording of the text is such that these students will understand what they are trying to convey and to clearly show them how calculus can be used to solve problems in their particular field.

At the beginning of the book, three pages of the Preface, the applications discussed in the text are listed by: Business and Economics, Life Sciences and Ecology, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences. Under these headings are subjects like: Value of a Car, AIDS, Cancer Rates, Abortion Rate and so on. These are subjects that will have some interest and applicability to students rather than the old traditional problems like water flowing into and out of a bucket that used to be the mainstream of teaching calculus.

Finally, calculus marks a transition in the study of mathematics for a student. Up until now he studied arithmetic every year in school, maybe he finally got to a bit of algebra and trig. Now he is exposed to a whole new world of ways to handle problems that go beyond anything he has seen before. This book eases the student into an understanding of how to approach these problems better than any I've seen.

This book, as an anthology of short sci-fi/noir comics, bored me. As I read through story after story I was hoping to come to the one which would redeem this book for me, but I never did. Some of the stories are slightly interesting, but none of them deal with the premise well enough to be interesting for what they are. The theme seems to be that each story takes place in New York City, if it were populated by robots, and these are the ground rules. Each writer has an idea that would be ok by itself, but the robot angle is just forced, and leaves me feeling a little irritated.

The art was pretty decent, however. Some of the visuals were impressive. In particular, I was impressed by Paul Lau.

It's pretty much what it says it is. It's fairly entertaining. I haven't read any of the other NYCMech books from Image, but I'd bet they're along a similar vein.

My only real gripe is that for the most part all of the robots in the stories are pretty much just people that look slike robots. They act and do things exactly like any robot would with the occasional robot-thing that sets them apart. It's a good comentary on human behavior, I suppose. The art is entertaining as well.

Imagine if Nick Hornsby, George Romero, Ray Bradbury, Candace Bushnell, Bret Easton Ellis and Isaac Asimov were having a potluck dinner at Ed McBain's house (McBain brought the appetizer) and began to contemplate a city filled with robots. No people, just a bunch of happy and sad, overworked but loved, hopeful and despondent, logical and insane robots. Stephen King then drops in late, (he brought desert) and joins in the already engaging chat. A couple of over-filled wine glasses later the talk would begin to get juicy.

24seven is like that - "juicy."

An anthology of loosely connected (largely by theme) stories finely written and drawn by some of the best comic book writers and artists currently working today, 24seven is a book to read and peer at repeatedly. It's one of those books you have on your night stand that once finished can be enjoyed over and again by discovering details not noticed at first glance.

It would have been easy to merely make the stories sardonic throughout (there are a few, thankfully...one needs hefty doses of sardonic at times) but some of the stories are, well they are actually sweet. A dude-bot finds his future love at a bar while enjoying a night out with his pals, while in another story a Carrie Bradshaw-like fembot retreats to a butterfly exhibit to merely enjoy nature's power of renewal.

But it's not all butterflies and unexpected sexy babe-bot smooches. Robofiremen answer the call to root out robot bad guys on the lam, ala "Fahrenheit 451" and a depressed husbandbot succumbs to the voices in his head, literally, in a final tale of robotic psychosis.

It might be easy to say that the use of robots instead of people is a gimmick. If it is a gimmick, more of a "hook" actually, then it is a gimmick that works and is utilized quite well. They are not mere mirrors of our own selves. The robots are like us, but they are different. Sometimes they are very different and it is in these differences, perhaps that the mirror is brought into analogous focus.

The stories are short, well crafted and the art is an absolute delight. Highly recommended.

I had thought this book was about first aid for wild animals, but as it turns out it's more like a manual for killing them. It's full of ways to kill but next nothing on healing wild creatures. This is the most disappointing book I've ever seen. I'd recommend that anyone interested in truly helping animals avoid this book...

It's true, there's a euthanasia section. It constitutes two pages of a 225-page book. Anyone not comfortable with the methods listed is free to have a veterinarian euthanize the animal instead, if need be. (Of course, putting the poor dying creature in a car and driving it to a loud, high-traffic building that reeks of people, dogs and cats may be more stressful for it, but if you can't bring yourself to break an animal's neck quickly and humanely, you probably care less about its feelings than yours.)

One thing I admire about this book is the authors' willingness to admit when they have little or no experience with a species. I trust them. When they do have experience, they share it: instructions on the safe capture, care, feeding, administration of first aid, and release of animals from waterfowl to deer to foxes are well-covered. The "Wildlife and the Law" and "Wildlife Rehabiliatation Centers" sections are proabably way out of date by now (my edition is dated 1983), but this is an excellent primer.

This book is FILLED with useful advice on how to care for wild creatures. It takes a no nonsense approach to capturing, handling, feeding and caring for orphaned or injured wild animals. Perhaps the previous reviewer couldn't handle the candor with which the authors deal with the reality that some animals in some circumstances can't be helped, but if you can and are interested in effectively helping animals that are in trouble, this book's for you.

I really enjoy novels about the sea, so was happy to learn about this little known classic. In clean, straightforward prose Hemingway might have admired, readers are introduced to the Archimedes, a steam ship beginning a cruise from North America to China. Weather intervenes and the ship and its crew are caught up in a deadly storm that severely tests their hearts and their will for four days. Much of the novel is an excellent narration of ship and crew in dire circumstances, but as the novel progresses different storms are adumbrated: storms of historical circumstance, storms of memory and experience, that add psychological and political depth to the work.

Readers who have enjoyed Melville and Conrad should find much to like here.

In Hazard by Richard Hughes falls neatly into some of the "man vs." plot categories: man vs. nature, man vs. technology with a little man vs. himself tossed in for good measure. It tells the story of a British cargo ship, the Archimedes, caught in a seemingly endless hurricane as the ship makes for the Panama Canal from the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.

The story, set in 1929, takes place between the two world wars, and, in fact, was originally published in 1938. The current publication is a re-release as part of New York Review of Books' Classics series. As Hughes says in an afterword written years after the initial publication, "the fading smell of remembered death in Britain was just beginning to be replaced by a new stench that was death prefigured."

If it weren't for Hughes' afterword, it would be easy for AP English teachers to seize on the book as an metaphor for the onset of World War II. The Archimedes caught helplessly in the storm even though some signs of the disaster were evident. The British ship eventually rescued by an American vessel. Hughes denies the allegory, saying his book is symbol, which is "never concerned primarily with the future qua future but with a much more timeless kind of truth."

The book is almost too neatly divided in half. The first half all plot and storm; the second, character development. For a modern reader accustomed to getting these two simultaneously, the book can be a difficult read. It takes a few chapters to feel comfortable with the mid-20th century writing.

The ship is the main character of the first half. The reader is taken on a tour of the vessel and its technologic advances explained in detail, along with explanations of where and how the cargo is stowed and hints of the tensions between the crew and officers, the English and Chinese, the engine room staff and the above-deck staff. Characters seem interchangeable at this point. When the storm hits and the ship's technology disabled, it's easy to lose track of what petty officer is doing what. But by this point, the ship in peril story has captured the reader's attention and moves quickly. Hughes' describes the events beautifully. When the ship reaches the eye of the hurricane, it becomes the only "land" for countless birds and insects. As the crew emerges to survey the damage to the ship, "[t]he officers were barefoot, and as they walked they kept stepping on live birds--they could not help it. I don't want to dwell on this, but I must tell you what things were like, and be done with it. You would feel the delicate skeleton scrunch under your feet: but you could not help it, and the gummed feathers hardly fluttered.

No bird, even crushed, or half-crushed, cried."

As the Archimedes is pulled back into the storm, the book abruptly changes. Detailed back stories and interior monologues for a junior officer and a Chinese laborer take center stage. The change in focus is jarring. If the character information had come earlier or been woven into the story of the storm, it could have been appreciated and helped to move the overall story forward. If the back stories had focused on the chief engineer who is central to the first and last sentences of the book, it may have worked better. As it is, the effect pulls the reader out of the story and feels an unnecessary interruption as the reader just wants to find out if and how the Archimedes survives.

Once the character pieces are finished, the rest of the book feels like an extended denouement. The storm ends; the American ship appears. It's another fast change from the slow pace of the character information.

The problems with tone and pacing could be a product of the 70-year time difference between the original and current release. Each half of the book could be a fine read on its own. It's the harsh combination that creates problems.

For years, I have been a big fan of Richard Hughes' book A High Wind in Jamaica. When I had a chance to read the newly republished In Hazard (1938) through Librarything's Early Reviewers program, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, I am not able to report on the new introduction by John Crowley, (author of Little, Big) since that was not included in the advance uncorrected proof.
Hughes has framed this compelling tale with a carefully researched account of a ship that was caught in, and dragged by, a hurricane over several days time, barely remaining afloat and soon without any power. Arranging the story by day over one week's time, we come to know how dependent parts of a ship's operating system are with all other parts and areas of the ship. The specific details of ship handling and construction were enthralling and horrifying. Into the frame, Hughes has inserted his characters, officers, engineers, Chinese stokers, a young seaman. Each of these becomes very real, and very individual, to the reader. The combination of the terrible storm, its effects on the ship and the men and the suspense of how, and if, the ship will survive make enthralling reading. Men act better, or worse, that you would expect under trials such as these. When you remember that the book came out just before World War II, it really makes you think about all the endangered men at sea in that conflict and what they had to undergo.
I recommend this book without reservation. The reader will gain a great deal of interesting information, and many things to ponder in the lives and interactions of human beings. The sudden event at the end was shocking to me, but I can see how it relates to the very beginning of the book, and makes the whole stronger.

I found this book to be extremely well researched, well written, balanced and enlightening. It clearly dispels the notion of a brutal, insensitive high-command hell bent on inflicting capital punishment on fresh-faced young boys who caved in to the terrors of life in the trenches during the great war. After reading "Blindfold and Alone" it becomes abundantly clear that even the strict disciplinarians on the General Staff were willing to look for mitigating circumstances that would allow them to avoid inflicting the supreme penalty on those found guilty of then military capital offences such as desertion and cowardice.

The vast majority of military capital cases tried during WW1 did not result in the death penalty being recommended, and of those that did, approximately 90% were reduced to a lesser sentence on review by field commanders. The net result being that approximately 1% of those initially charged with capital offences were actually executed. Due to the excellent research carried out by the authors and presented in the text, contemporary readers can conclude that those who did suffer the supreme penalty, for the most part, were deserving of it. Yes, there were cases that by today's standards would be rejected on medical (psychiatric) grounds, just as there were cases (such as murder) that likely would have resulted in execution if brought before a civilian court of the day. However, many of those executed had lengthy military "rap sheets" and several had received a prior death sentence which had been reduced on review so they were no strangers to the military judicial system and its penalties.

The book contains much interesting, moving and no doubt correct information about its subject. That is valuable in itself.

Corns and Hughes-Wilson don't just offer information. They also argue for a certain thesis: 'Spilled water cannot be replaced in a smashed jug' (Arab proverb), and so any idea of retrospective pardons should be strongly opposed.

The book's presentation of its thesis is so slovenly, that it would be a fine text for use for practice on a course in critical thinking. Suppose you want to form your own opinion on this controversy. Here are a few examples of the kind of obstacles Corns and Hughes-Wilson put in your way:

1 There are gratuitous sneers here and there about their opponents who advocate pardons. The reader has to be alert to separate sneer from substance.

2 In presenting one of the main pillars of their argument they rely mainly on Arab proverbs and poetic aphorisms such as 'The past is another country'. The thoughtful reader will hope to find a clearly reasoned statement of the authors' position on the tricky question of moral judgements about other times and places. But once you cut away the book's vague rhetoric on this point there is nothing left.

3 There are some whopping contradictions to be found if you keep your eyes open. For example.
The authors seem to be saying, albeit rather impressionistically, that the executions were basically OK by the standards of the time. However, the jacket of the book states that the executions were 'Controversial even at the time'.
On the issue whether executions were necessary because they discouraged mass desertion that might otherwise have occurred, sometimes the authors seem to be suggesting that this was indeed so, and in other places the opposite.

4 There is also scope for spotting important inferences from the facts which the authors unaccountably fail to draw. They state (p. 103) that 'the death penalty was used only in a minute percentage of cases', and they back this up with ample evidence. Do they conclude that those few who were executed were therefore treated unfairly - perhaps even so unfairly that they deserve a pardon? No, Corns and Hughes-Wilson don't seem to notice that this possible line of debate even exists. As a reader, you will have to spot it for yourself.

On a frivolous note, I can't resist recording that the acknowledgement at the beginning to 'our eagle-eyed copy-editor' contains both a spelling mistake and a punctuation mistake in the same sentence.

In short, recommended to two classes of reader: those who want a library of all the main works on this subject; and those who want something for a good workout of the critical thinking faculties.
Definitely not for someone who wants just one thoroughly reliable work on the subject.

As you browse books in Amazon, you might think: "oh, yet another Calculus book."
First, let me begin by putting this book in its proper context: it is a Calculus 2 book, but not an Advanced Calculus book.
But this book has some qualities that set it apart from the heap of Calculus books. First of all, it is the fruition of a Harvard-based consortium with a grant from the National Science Foundation to write a "new" Calculus book. What's new about it? Well, it is based on an "old" philosophy, that I'll paraphrase from the Preface: Calculus was invented to solve problems! So, using Calculus, you can reduce complicated problems to simple ones. Central to this unified, application-oriented approach, every topic is presented numerically, geometrically, and algebraically. Every time, every topic: numerically, geometrically, and algebraically. Now, all contemporary authors of Calculus text would claim to be doing the same. But this way of approaching the subjects is here by design, as a very core characteristic of the text. The result is that you begin to look at the problems as something more than nuisances to be solved by rote learning (gone are the days students got to read Apostol at their first iteration through Calculus...really learning, instead of having dumbed down explanations that, in fact, make learning *harder* - I wasn't one of the lucky ones...) Somehow the authors were very precise and sensitive in identifying "gotchas" in the student's first iteration through multivariable calculus.
I discovered this book a bit too late in my Calculus 2 class. But this is a cheaper book than the ones that cost over $100. You should buy it, even as a supplement. Again, keep in mind this is not Advanced Calculus and neither was it meant to be.
And insofar as "mathematical rigor" is concerned _at this level_ it is the same - and IMHO even a little better - than some other very popular books.

The idea of a solutions manual is fantastic. It's a quick, convenient way to see how to solve problems.

Unfortunately, this book falls short in several ways.

First, only EVERY OTHER ODD problem is covered. That means, in a typical chapter, only 5-10 problems are covered. For a course as difficult as Multivariable Calculus, this is woefully inadequate.

Second, many of the "solutions" are NOT solutions. They are answers. You will frequently find just the answer given with no explanation of how the solution was derived. In the back of the actual textbook is the answer to EVERY odd numbered problem. So to reprint just the answer in a new book is a waste of paper. Why spend $34 on a solutions manual that gives the same info that the back of the text has?

Third, for the solutions that are explained, they aren't explained very well. You will frequently find a sequence of algebraic operations, but nothing saying how they went from one step to the next. The authors apparently expect you to know, but if you did, why would you need a solutions manual?

This solutions manual CAN be helpful, but just be aware that your $34 isn't going to get you very much help.

I have this book first edition; this third edition is not much different from the first one. No CFD, no computer applications and almost the same subjects of 30 years ago. The chapters about MHD, non-newtonian flows and hyper-sonic flows are all but too short; they are almost useless.
There is a new chapter about waves which figures are not as good as the older ones.
Well, the book is cheap and certenly worths the price.

Fluid mechanics is a vast field. It can be considered a branch of applied physics. Highly mathematical, as can be seen in the problems given in this book by Hughes. He takes you through the field, giving the salient equations used to describe various fluid phenomena.

Foremost amongst these is the Navier-Stokes equation. A nonlinear partial differential equation that describes the balancing or conservation of momentum and energy in a fluid. Most of fluid mechanics builds on Navier-Stokes. So you need to get your understanding of it down pat. The problems given for these should be tackled and hopefully solved by you, before going onto later sections in the book. You need a solid grasp of this. It can make the rest much easier.

Other chapters describe various important special cases. Like incompressible flow. Or one dimensional flow of a fluid that is compressible. Then expanding this discussion into 2 dimensions.

Boundary layer problems are also heavily studied. Important in practice, because these relate to the designing of surfaces of planes or boats or missiles. Which leads naturally into problems of turbulence.

Then what if the fluid is charged? Electromagnetic effects [currents] then come into consideration. So Hughes devotes a chapter to magnetohydrodynamics. Students of nuclear fusion or stellar evolution may find this chapter germane.

Overall, Hughes gives a broad span of the field. Many problems to sharpen your understanding.