Scott Neal Books

With the coming of the internet, the phenomena of the 'Virtual Library' has become ubiquitous for community, academic, corporate, and governmental libraries and library systems around the world. Compiled and edited by the team of librarians and information technology experts R. David Lankes, Scott Nicholson, Marie l. Radford, Joanne Silverstein, Lynn Westbrook, and Philip Nast, "Virtual Reference Service: From Competencies To Assessment" provides the cutting edge of Virtual Reference Services (VRS), summarizing important research, illustrating VRS principles and practices with real-world case examples and case studies. Of special note are the discussion on programs and tools that libraries can utilize to enhance their current offerings ranging from Instant Messaging, to subject-specific taxonomies enabling virtual medical and health reference support. "Virtual Reference Service" is a key and fundamentally recommended addition Library Science reference collections and library staff member in-house training supplemental reading lists.

This is an excellent piece of qualitative research and I use it as an example in my research class. As other writers have noted this book is entertaining and fun. Also, it demonstrates how a researcher uses snowball sampling to find individuals who may otherwise be reluctant to admit to others that they are engaging in some kind of behavior which society considers immoral or which is outright illegal. Research does not have to be dull and good qualitative research reads as well as the best fiction.

All I can say is... wow. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to currently be a student of Richard Wright's, studying Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. While this ethnography is extremely insightful and intriguing, it doesn't even begin to capture the sheer brilliance that IS Richard Wright. He is truly a one of a kind researcher, and many of his ideas have been groundbreaking in the field of Criminology -- especially since the studies for this book were done in the '80s, a much more conservative period as far as criminological research is concerned. This book would be interesting and even entertaining for anyone, but especially for those with a background in Criminology or Sociology. I would also recommend Richard Wright's other piece about this research project, BURGLARS ON THE JOB.

Sounds good. A bit too verbose. The book's name is better than the conclusion. Nothing you would not expect if you watched enough violence movies.

This is first rate ethnography that is well-written, insightful, and entertaining. Yes, I said entertaining, as in a good read. Fascinating book that will really make you think about what lies behind criminal decision-making . . . highly recommend it.

I spent three years being bored to points beyond death in law school, but this book was something all together different. The fact that it was written at all is impressive. You read about the inner city in the papers, but this book takes you there, and not just into the slum, but into the heads of the dregs of society. The logic expressed by the subjects of this book is so radically foreign to those of us in textbook America. Take a chance and look into the underclass. Oops, I used the class-word. I know we don't have those in this country, but this book may make you think. I only wish Pat Buchanan could meet some of these guys.

I loved this book.
It seems like most reviewers who enjoy Cryptonomicon are involved heavily in some type of geeky activity, so this review is for the other people out there, people like me, who ask only "Does it work?", not, "How does it work?"
This book, with all of its in-depth explanations for questions I never thought to ask, was incredibly engaging. It has an enormous plotline that spans several decades, yet does eventually tie in together. There are lots of "Aha!" moments, as well as several where you ask "How did he DO that?"
I loved it so much that I bought it for my husband, a computer geek, and my dad, definitely not a computer geek, for their father's day gifts. It is looong, but unforgettable. The best way to read this book is in big stretches, so carve out some time, put your feet up, and get ready to lose yourself in a place where eating cereal has a mathematical precision that will amaze you.
And if you don't like it, you can always use it to prop open doors.

It has the same problems, as it's overlong trite cyberpunk. However, at least his writing's improved.

Neal Stephenson is a fantastic writer, and his skills truly shine in Cryptonomicon. Yes, it's a long book, but I suggest to all those who find fault with Stephenson's long-windedness that brevity is not somehow 'better' than verbosity, it's just different. Stephenson has carved his own niche in the continuum of writing-style, and, yes, it's in the Long-Winded-Land area of the spectrum. Is it a good style despite this? YES. Stephenson is incredibly deft with words, and the telling of his story is extremely effective. Cryptonomicon made me laugh, cry, and feel ill to my stomach at times (in a good way!). The dialogue is witty as usual for Stephenson, the plot is dense, multifarious, and fascinating, and the characters are well-developed. What more could you ask for? I recommend 'Cryptonomicon' to you, yes, YOU.

I LOVED this book. But, for potential readers, I have a VERY large caveat: Unless you have a love of mathematics and/or cryptanalysis you're going to miss out on much that made the book, for me, so great. In fact, judging from the one and two star reviews so prevalent here, you more than likely are going to hate it and end up torching it in your back yard in frustration and dancing around the ashes. By way of anecdote, I was talking to one of my neighbours who happens to have a degree in mechanical engineering while we were out walking our dogs about a certain aspect of the book that had me puzzled for a bit, and another neighbour stopped to join us. After listening for a time, she looked at me and asked, in a semi-sarcastic, baffled tone, "Are you reading an Engineering textbook for fun?" When I told her it was a novel, she became even more nonplussed. So, the point here is, you've been warned. I happen to be an English Literature major, but I was one of those kids in school who in, say, trigonometry class just looked at a math problem, knew the answer and handed in my tests in five minutes. The words, "SHOW WORK" are scorched into my memory of adolescence. On the other hand, if you've liked Stephenson's other works, or like picaresque literary jaunts in general, you will no doubt like this one as well. You'll just have to skip the parts I found most fascinating.

I can now say, though, that I understand why Stephenson fans took him to task for lack of verisimilitude in Snow Crash and the books which constitute The Baroque Cycle, both of which are a great deal of fun to read, but not terribly conducive to deep thinking. This book is so conducive, for a number of reasons, but the primary one, I should say, is that very few people realise just how WEIRD the branch of mathematics known as Statistics is. The simplest example I can think of is coin tossing: If you enter a (rather primitive) casino, toss a coin once and come up heads, your chance on the second toss of coming up heads again is 25%. It's not 50%. Furthermore, if you toss the coin and it comes up heads, then put the coin in your pocket and wait three days, three months, three years, however long, and take that same coin out of your pocket on the other side of the globe and flip it, your chances of coming up heads, after all this time, are still 25%, not 50%. I've gone out about the Math enough for this review, but the Math herein is very much concerned with probabilities like this one. It makes you start thinking, as the character Waterhouse does at one point, of the entire world as a giant probability wave. I can't tell you how many hours of sleep I lost tossing and turning with different numbers running through my head.

The characters in this book, as Stephenson puts it are "people too busy leading their lives to worry about extending their life expectancy." This makes for very intriguing, if involved, reading. But the writing can also approach the poetic at times. The sinking of the Arizona at Pearl Harbor is described thusly: "A military lyre of burnished steel that sings a thousand men to their resting places at the bottom of the harbor."

And the book is so terribly funny. The Englishman, Chatan's, description to Detachment 2702 of the importance of knowing the right way to, er, blow your head off if in danger of being caught by the enemy is priceless, "You would be astonished at how many otherwise competent chaps botch this apparently simple procedure."

Also, as noted by other reviewers, there are numerous in-jokes, my personal favourite being the Latin motto for the Societas Eruditorum: "Ignoti et quasi occulti." Which Enoch Root translates for Bob Shaftoe as, "Hidden and unknown-more or less," which is EXACTLY what it means! Notice the quotation marks surrounding more or less. The word "quasi," in Latin means "more or less" or "as it were" or "so to speak".

Alright, I've gone on long enough, perhaps too long, for an Amazon review. For those few who might be interested, I'll try to include a simple program I came up with for solving the Turing bicycle problem, which Stephen uses to illustrate how the Enigma machine works in the Comment section once this review is posted.

A wonderful book!

When you're in a bookstore the CRYPTONOMICON doesn't look all that intimidating. You've seen tons of books this thick by Tom Clancy and Robert Jordan--and probably read some or all of them with no problem.

But online here at Amazon you only see the page numbers--a whopping 1100 + !!!

Now for the important question: Is it worth your time turning all these pages?

LOCATIONS: A book this thick has to have some interesting locations, and it does: From pre-WWII Shanghai, the jungles of the Philippines, England, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Australia. I've never been to the Philippines but I felt like the author did a good job of describing it.

CHARACTERS: There are several main characters (all male) and the author takes turns telling each of their stories, which is a good way to break up any monotony. I wasn't able to really visualize what the characters looked like, but their individual actions and adventures more than make up for that. Some characters are of the nerdy suit-and-tie type and others are of the practical military-gear toting-type.

FUN: Is this a fun book to read? If you like humor and geeky "Gee Whiz" sort of information every now and then, this book has plenty of it. I especially found the part about Van Eck Phreaking really interesting--and something only the most paranoid of people would worry about. There is lots of history, most of it dealing with the Pacific Theater of WWII that I did not know before, since most games and books seem to dwell on the European side of that War.

OVERALL: If you want to read a book with some variety in location, rich in history and sub-plots that don't seem connected until much later, then I definitely recommend this book. It's a jungle of a book, but sometimes the jungle is where you find the rarest treasure.

This book has many quality pictures but the info would only be helpful to a new aquarist interested in owning an oscar or two. I've counted at least two typos as well. This hints at a hasty release of this book possibly to turn a quick profit. There is not much attention payed to diseases and disorders of oscars. So in fewer words.....this book is meh.

Fast delivery & like new condition. Definately a thumbs up!

Still it is easy to read, and there are some interesting facts. Primarily for beginners, and as such pretty good in my opinion.

I HAVE WANTED THIS BOOK SINCE IT WAS PUBLISHED, AND WHEN I COULD
GET IT FROM YOU, I TOOK IT IMMEDIATELY. I FIND IT TO BE THE BEST
OF REFERENCE BOOKS AROUND TO DATE. THANK YOU.

I enjoyed the book immensly. I read it in one day cover to cover all 900+ pages. Very informative and great pictures of fish. I have been a hobbyist for 20 years and I still learned something from it.

I wanted one great dictionary for reference as I just got started with my aquarium a few months ago. I found this to be badly indexed, and since it is alphabetical by Latin subspecies and then Latin name within it, they assume a great deal of knowledge right off the bat. Then you need to look up the common name in the index to find the latin name and my most common fish aren't even in there under common name (ie., Molly, Platy). Guppy is under "D" in the index, a typo for "G" - which makes me think this wasn't even proofread. I really didn't need information on freshwater fish like bass and pike, since those aren't aquarium fish, so don't understand who the audience is supposed to be. Many fish in here measure over a foot in length. I have an aquarium, I'm not going fishing.

Unlike many previous Tropical Fish books from the Tropical Fish Hobbyist publisher that were not much more that an unorganized child's picture book, this Encyclopedia is well oganized and has a great common name and scientific name index. A desciption of the fish is on the left page with two corresponding pictures on the right page which makes for easy reading. I would rate this book 5 stars if the descriptions were more detailed. It leaves out temperature range, PH range, sexing information, etc. even though there is sufficient room in the description area for about 40% more verbiage. I recommend this book to be used in conjunction with the 4 Volume set of the Baensch Aquarium Atlas which provides much greater detail of each fish species.

The author doesn't even include the temperature to keep the fish.

It really started out much clearer than it ended. The readability is OK and the website that accompanies the book is a fantastic way to reinforce what you have just read. I think that the online site makes all of the difference. If you can buy acess to it if you are buying a used edition, it is worth it for only $20.00. It makes the material much clearer than just reading the book alone.

The readability of this book is very difficult. It throws a LOT of numbers at you that are insignificant. This does not bode well, especially when it's late at night and youre trying to get through the chapter. The facts and figures overwhelm you when all youre trying to do is pull out the main ideas. But what can you do about it? The teacher makes you buy the book for the class, so you buy it. Just be prepared to do lots of highlighting to atleast help you cut down on all the unnecessary stuff.

This new book arrived on time. My only problem was that I had to pay full retail price.

Our US school no longer has time to teach handwriting. I was actually looking for handwriting book that taught connected letters similar to what they teach in England. D'Naelian is not this type of handwriting - rather, it's what they used to teach in the US. Disappointed.