Works Books

Very unfortunately, the public at large too often misses out on opportunities to delve more deeply into something with which they are not familiar--in this case, I am talking about videogames. Many people have the idea that games are just about "Mario" or, at the other end of the spectrum, violence and shooting. Having said that, should you ever feel obliged to convince a friend or relative otherwise, to show them that games can be utterly remarkable and intricate works of art and creative thought, look no further than this book!

Conceived in large part by the duo of Kaori Tanaka (illustrator, designer, video game story writer) and Tetsuya Takahashi (director), the story affiliated with Xenogears is truly epic, not only in its ambitious scope, but also because of the utter attention to detail. Perusing this rare book does some part to portray the grandiose vision that these creative minds had. Indeed, I am beginning to understand why Squaresoft (as it was then called) seemed rather reluctant to further develop on this series; while Xeno's following is not as large as that of Final Fantasy, it is easily apparent that the amount of effort and resources needed to do this saga justice could easily rival that of the more popular Final Fantasy franchise. It is a shame we have not been granted the experience of another game in the Xenogears storyline; to this day, I still imagine what those games must feel like.

Taken from a reference at Wikipedia, "The Xenogears Perfect Works [book] contains detailed information of the world where the game is set. It describes the characters, creatures, Gear mechanics, geographical setting, social structures, scientific terms and the history, covering all the supposed six episodes of Xenogears (even if only one episode was published as a game)." As other reviewers have mentioned, if you have played Xenogears before (arguably one of the greatest RPGs of all time) and enjoyed it, then you owe it to yourself to pick up this gem. Even if you do not speak Japanese, and even if you do not like Xenogears, this book is still one of a kind, a true collector's item, and is worth the purchase. 5 Stars for me, without a moment's hesitation!

if you can read Japanese... or even if you cant. If you have played the game through then you must get this book. When I got this book i wanted to read its contents so badly that i took up Japanese and have eventualy been able to decifer the whole thing. So on top of reading the best book ever I have learned a new language to boot. And I will be the first to say that it was well worth it.

if you can read Japanese... or even if you cant. If you have played the game through then you must get this book. When I got this book i wanted to read its contents so badly that i took up Japanese and have eventualy been able to decifer the whole thing. So on top of reading the best book ever I have learned a new language to boot. And I will be the first to say that it was well worth it.

This is quite possibly the most INCREDIBLE Japanese artbook that I own. (And that is saying something; I own QUITE a few)

First off, if you love Xenogears, this book is an absolute MUST-HAVE. Every inch, every *millimeter* of the game is covered in this book. Take note that even though it IS in Japanese text, it is also a very beautiful thick artbook with EVERY official Xenogears artwork ever released between it's covers. All of the origins of everything about Xenogears is in this book, including explanations of the connections between all of the characters, the history and structure of different creatures, places, etc. Even if you know absolutely NO Japanese, buy this book. You won't be disappointed.

Oh yeah, there ARE some translations available online of various parts of the book. :)

This book contains anything and everything you'd ever want to know about Xenogears - from early character sketches to social structure to science to history to geography to thorough and complete background on the characters - ALL of them, meaning, everyone with a portrait.

Xenogears, despite being phenomenally complex for its medium, is a MASSIVE story squashed into a single rpg, and if you know the -true- complexity of the plot and their world, that becomes all the more apparent. So much about the characters and world/universal history were left out. For example, the game never mentioned how Yui and Citan met (which may sound frivolous, but it certainly is not), never told of Citan's brothers and parents, never got past stating one or two facts about Sigurd's past, did not go into Krelian's life before the war at all (did you know that he was originally supposed to assassinate Sophia back in their homeland of Nimrod, but seeing that she was then just a child, he took pity on her and didn't do it?)...really, I could go on for a while, and not just about the individuals we all know and love. PERFECT WORKS contains all this information and more. The text is completely in Japanese - but if you cannot read the language, translations are not too difficult to find online.

The single downside of such a treasure is that the spine is incredibly weak for a book of its size. A page out of mine is loose already, and I barely look at it as it is, in order to preserve it. Do not scan images out of it unless you have another copy, because you will certainly ruin it. You may want to invest in two so that you can have one to continuously look at and one to display.

PERFECT WORKS may become irrelevant in terms of content with the release of Xenosaga, as the new rpg is the starting point of a retelling of the Xenogears tale. However, that makes this book no less valuable, both for sentimentality and as an original. This is something no Xenogears admirer should be without.

With over 30 years of IC pain, I was tolerating only water and green beans until I read this book. The author, an IC sufferer and doctor, includes a wealth of suggestions which I immediately was easily able to incorporate into my diet and life style. Yes, the foods IC sufferers cannot tolerate are listed in her book which I found very helpful!

As a high school teacher and a mother of a medical doctor, the knowledge I acquired in this book led me to a FOOD SUPPLEMENT which has STOPPED my IC pain-it's been over 8 years that I have been taking this, not to mention no more neck and back pain, severe menstrual pain, a decrease in allergies, a clearer complexion, etc. YES! - A miracle food supplement for me! Prior to the discovery of this food supplement, my urologist offered an option of removing my bladder and wearing an external bag! I was about to give up teaching because I felt like a zombie from the IC pain that awakened me every hour during the night, let alone, all the trips to the lavatory in between every high school class period! The food/drink/vitamin information in this book and the food supplement I discovered have stopped the IC pain, as well as other pain.

What a fabulous domino effect! I started noticing that this same food supplement was stopping other pains! Prior to my taking this food supplement, the orthopedist recommended that I have neck and back surgery after years of recurrent episodes of excruciating pain when repeated physical therapy sessions and pain medications failed to provide relief. To avoid surgery, I went to a chiropractor for the first time in my life which continued for five years with therapy visits required every two months to stay pain free. I then went to a neurologist for a second opinion of the chiropractor's progress on my neck and back. The neurologist said I would always need to be under the chiropractor's care if I was to avoid the neck and back surgery . . . until the FOOD SUPPLEMENT stopped my neck and back pain! I have not seen my chiropractor in over 8 years or any other doctor for neck and back pain since taking this food supplement!!!

I take one tablet after breakfast every day and I am pain free!!! Basically, it is a naturally-occurring substance in everyone's body that feeds the nerve endings so that they are healthy and pain free; but, in some people this substance does not replenish itself as fast as the body expends it and, thus, the pain. This food supplement is a naturally-occurring source of organically-bound dietary sulfur that replenishes this deficit without side effects. It contains no solvents, sugar, salt, yeast, wheat, corn, dairy products, coloring, flavoring, or preservatives.

A well-known urogynecologist in Connecticut who sees many IC patients refers her IC patients to me to supply them with this food supplement.

...

Thank you, Dr. Gillespie, for the knowledge in your book is what led me to discover this food supplement which has returned me to a normal life!!! I have been able to continue teaching which has allowed me to provide the financial support to meet the educational needs of my son who is now a Physical Education teacher and my daughter who is graduating this May from the University of Connecticut Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut, as a medical doctor and to support my husband as he was caught up in the corporate buyouts and found himself unemployed until he changed careers and is now a U.S. Post Office employee. I can only imagine where my family and I would be had I not read your book!

You will refer to her book over and over again - as I have!!!

I suffered from recurrent bladder infections and the excrutiating symptoms even without the presence of bacterial infection for many years. I had massive long term antibiotic therapy, surgical procedures and saw several urologists - all without relief. My mother gave me this book in 1988 and I am so grateful to her and to Dr. Gillespie. This book changed my life! I now understand my condition and can manage it. Many doctors are unaware of IC or believe it to be very rare (it's not as rare as they think!). I still get 1-2 infections a year, but that is heaven compared to what I used to suffer. I can't recommed this book highly enough!

I came across this book 10 years ago at a seminar and have been giving it to patients ever since. It is very well-written especially for the layman, providing numerous things to think about it in the face of chronic bladder problems. Being a chiropractor, I also found it fascinating that Dr. Gillespie basically spells out the whole theory behind chiropractic care when she cites that the number one cause of bladder and prostate problems is low back problems! Using diagrams she shows how the nerves enamating from the lumbar spine enervate these areas of the body. Though she doesn't mention chiropractic care in her book, I had to laugh when I saw that she had, however unwittingly, totally validated the science and theory of Chiropractic care. Whatever the underlying cause of your bladder problem, you are likely to find some help with this book.

This is a ground-breaking book written by a doctor who truly understands both bacterial and interstitial cystitis. Before the 1st edition of this book, the medical world was virtually silent on the subject, telling women it was all in their heads! Dr. Gillespie shows a deep understanding of the all-too-common and frequently mis-treated and/or over-medicated cystitis (urinary tract infection). Further, Dr. Gillespie virtually forced the medical world to learn about interstitial cystitis (IC) and to begin research into more humane and effective methods of treating it. Dr. G is a personal hero for me. Her book has provided guidance in my dealings with IC,where unfortunately most doctors still don't know what IC is. This book can help the patient to make decisions about treatments that can affect their body for many years to come. This book has helped me to minimize the occurrence of bacterial cystitis. And while my IC is incurable, this book has provided insight and helpful methods to make the condition less debilitating. Thanks for this ground-breaking book!!!

While the book does validate IC-which 10 years ago was relatively unknown, the treatments will not work for everyone. I believe everyone needs hope with this dreadful disease, and at a first pass, this book provides it. I must thank the doctor for that. I read the book, was a patient of the doctor, and followed the protocol for 2 years. ....

This book has been pretty helpful, my girlfriend and I enjoyed going through it and reading certain sections.
It's true, most of the subject matter isn't a walk on the beach, but it's good information to know and understand. Besides explaining the previously unmentionable, it also offers good suggestions as to what to say and do if you're in a situation covered in the book.
The language is plain english and slightly humorous (without damaging the credibility of the information)
The only reason it's not 5 stars is because the book skipped one or two particular things we, as a couple, were looking for.

As someone who is active in the Endometriosis community, one of the most common problems women come across is explaining Endometriosis to their husbands or boyfriend. Since Endometriosis can cause painful sex, infertility, and other possible relationship problems, the disease can cause problems for both men and women. This book offered one of the best explanations of Endometriosis to men that I have ever seen. It does not go into too much detail, but it goes in enough detail that it allows men to really understand the full nature of this awful disease.

I found 'Your Guy's Guide to Gynocology' witty, informative and a big help in understanding the fairer sex. This should be required reading for every bloke interested in improving his relationships with women. Bekkar and Wahn deserve a medal.

Dr. Wahn, one of the authors of "Your Guys Guide to Gynecology",is my personal Gynecologist and for that reason I bought the book. Thinking that I knew everything in the book, I read it anyway. I found it not only to be informative, and humorous for men, but I also learned things that I didn't know.I think that this book should be a required reading for High School Seniors, both male and female.

The amazing fact about this book is that I learned a lot about a subject I thought I already knew a lot.It is fun to read and the more you read the more fun you will have in using or living your gained knowledge.I am more sensible towards my girlfriends feelings which gives me a better feeling,too.This book is definitively a recommendation for both sexes,because there are always two involved in a relationship. Thank you for teaching me!

This book is awesome! Does not go indepth, but has ALL the pertinent information related to specific diseases/clinical signs (definitions, Physiology, symptoms, lab work, treatment, follow up care)all on one page! A VERY useful book so far, especially from a tech's point of view!

Just replaced my 3rd edition, the 4th addition is a bit better has some new information, doseages for new drugs and a CD with Client education handouts.

I needed this item ASAP and I received it on time which was excellent since I paid for fast shipping. The cover of the book though looked a little worn. The book was supposed to be new but looking at it I wasn't 100% sure. If I had time I probably would have returned it for another copy. Besides that I was satisfied with my purchase.

very helpful in learning details about diseases and drugs we use.Easy to use the book and easy to understand.Thank you for the opportunity for me to receive this book to Turkey.

Whenever I encounter a new disease, or need to refresh my memory about one I haven't seen lately, I reach for this book first. I find it to be concise, informative, and useful. While other medical texts make for good fireside or bedtime reading, this one cuts to the chase, and is useful in the midst of a busy veterinary schedule.
I use this book as my "nerd book", jotting notes in the margins when I learn something new about a disease from reading journals. Overall I am quite impressed at how up-to-date and complete the information is vis-a-vis JAVMA, the Compendium for Continuing Education, etc. I also appreciate that this book comes out in new additions often enough to keep up with the rapid changes in veterinary medicine.

This is such a precious book! It's one to read in small bits, because it is so chock full of simple wisdom. Love it!

Andy Murry has a close relationship with his Lord and Savior, Jesus. He makes the point that we can only experience Christ by accepting that Jesus paid the price IN FULL for our unclean natures. Keeping rules of conduct is only a product of our FAITH. We are saved by GRACE THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST. GRACE IS AN UNEARNED AND UNDESERVED GIFT FROM GOD THROUGH CHRIST. AMEN!

Review by Richard W. Kelsey, PE and Author
Search "Powerful Wisdom for Powerful Writing,"
Amazon.com or AuthorHouse Publishers

Outstanding treatment on communion with Jesus. Very practical, accurate, useful in helping disciples to walk daily with the Lord.

I am a great fan of great devotional writing and Andrew Murray's "Abide In Christ" is one of my top choices along with a few, time-tested others (Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly, The Depths of Jesus Christ by Jeanne Guyon, The Spiritual Guide by Michael Molinos, The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer).

I know of no other lesson that is as crucial to every child of God than learning to "Abide in Christ." And yet there is nothing easier than drifting along on a thousand other spiritual currents than "the one thing that is needful." Our lives can thus be so fragmented and parceled among so many competing demands that we have lost sight of Jesus Christ. And to no longer fix our eyes on Him is to lose sight of everything.

One of our greatest lacks today, both individually and corporately, is authentic, intimate, sustained encounter with Jesus Christ. We think all things are well as long as we are continuing to learn more "about" Him rather than "from" Him.

The bible itself has become an obstacle rather than an avenue to greater intimacy with our Lord. Again, we think all things are well as long as we are continuing to learn more about the bible rather than the One whom the bible writes. We think learning biblical principles for living is somehow adequate and what we are called to. But this is not the call of Jesus Christ on our hearts. "You search the scriptures," He said, "thinking that in them you have eternally life, but you won't come to Me that you might have life." But in many instances, just like our forebears, we think it sufficient to eat from the tree of the knowledge of "good and evil" rather than coming to Jesus, our tree of life, our bread of life, our water of life, our "all in all." And on the road to Emmaus, Jesus "pointed out to them all things in scripture that pointed to Him." In all of our bible reading, do we fix our eyes on Jesus?

The deepest longing of Jesus Christ is for closeness with us. In one place it says that Jesus cried with a loud voice saying "Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest!" We need to be reminded of this, often and daily.

Murray writes:

And observe especially, it was not that He said, "Come to Me and abide with Me," but, "Abide in me." The communion was not only to be unbroken, but most intimate and complete. He opened His arms to press you to His bosom; He opened His heart to welcome you there; He opened up all His divine fullness of life and love and offered to take you up into its fellowship to make you wholly one with Himself. "There was a depth of meaning you cannot yet realize in His words: "Abide in me."

Just what is this "depth of meaning?" What is this "unbroken, intimate, and complete" fellowship with Jesus Christ? What is this call to "inner communion" into the heart of our Lord? Do read this classic devotion "Abide In Christ" and discover some of the answers. Rediscover the ultimate call and central message of Jesus Christ to all those who have lost their way.

This was one of the greatest books on living in Christ I've ever read. Though tough reading, it still influences my prayer life today. If you haven't read it, you must!

This book provides a great foundation for the classes I am teaching in e-commerce. It's chapters on site server also are excellent! I found the fundamentals section to be outstanding for handling the task of getting new students up to speed.

This book is really useful from the standpoint of providing an overview of what ESD is doing today, and how e-commerce tools from Microsoft are making it possible for organizations of any size to buyild their own sites. I found the chapters on managing a new site useful with some good suggestions for getting everyone on the same page from a development standpoint. Good reference book and teaching tool for new administrators.

I have been studying up on e-business and found this book to have a personable tone and many insights into how I could get up to speed quickly with terms and concpets to manage the outsourcing of our company's website quicker. I liked the chapters on building a framework for organizing solutions and found the chapter on electronic software ditribution very enlightening. An easy book to read.

This book has interesting information about Microsoft's Site Server applications, and shows the plans for electronic software distribution Microsoft authored with key industry leaders. it is decidely pro e-commerce and provides an interesting approach to managing web development through cross-functional project teams.

I found this book to provide a level-set for my staff, who is working on the definition of our websites, and what we could reasonably expect with the resources onhand. This book gave us hands-on guidelines and advice from experience we could use for getting our site completed in the minimum amount of time with the least disconnects between what we wanted and what we ended up creating. E-Commerce is constantly changing, and this book brings all the change into perspective. Good teaching tool.

I have followed Rick Smolan's books for many years. This book touched me as few others have done. My Czech wife often seems to miss the diversity of the true America. I think all of us that have suffered these past 8 years where we might not have felt proud of our country can find something to feel proud of in this book. Here one can see so clearly and beautifully the diversity, the imagination, the love of family and friends that we who have grown up in America hold to be the true America. I shared this book with my wife who I think was quite surprised to see how many America's there are and to see what the true fabric of our society looks like beyond the slick magazines and endless TV glitz.

This is a book that you can give to someone who wants to see and better understand what America is truly about.

A beautiful and elegant celebration of american life at home.
The authors also offer a great way to personalize the outer cover of the book with your own pictures. Very cool!! Customizing the cover makes a great conversation piece for your home as well as a great gift for friends and family.

I love the warmth of this book. I travel the world and am disturbed by the misconceptions many foreigners have of us here at home. (I can't say I blame them with the present administration having devastated our reputation and the relentless negative news reports.)
I would love to share this book with everyone abroad. It paints honest, touching, personal, everyman images of true Americans in all sorts of everyday activities in their homes.
Whether as a gift to people abroad or enjoyed with friends and family, this beautiful book presents who we are as everyday people. Honest, simple, good, loving Americans.
Thanks to Rick and Jennifer.

Review from Ryan Brenizer's Amazon Blog

America at Home
8:45 AM PDT, June 16, 2008, updated at 8:47 AM PDT, June 16, 2008
If millions of photographers around the world have a collective bias, it's this: The more interesting the better. Generally, that's a good thing -- the last thing the world needs are thousands of photo documentaries on "Things I Found in My Belly-Button." But if you're trying to document the way we live, it can be dangerously deceptive. Someone hundreds of years from now looking only at the professional photography of the era might assume we spent most of our time getting married and killing each other, but never went to the store or drove to work.

Photojournalist Rick Smolan tries to ameliorate this with "America at Home." Documenting as broad an idea as American domestic life is a daunting task, but Rick handles it adeptly, with a number of clever flourishes. His curating of the collection is very well-handled. It's unselfish, with his own work playing roles only where it fits best (and one of my favorite photos in the book, of a girl resting on the couch in the dramatic shadows of twilight, is his). With few exceptions, the photos that look best large are given the space to shine, and the photos that can convey messages in smaller sizes are paired up on a page, maximizing visual impact. The work itself tends to be both brilliant and familiar, trending toward subtle compositions that tell a story without being garish, appropriate for the topic.

Where it starts to get clever is in how the book is arranged. There are essays by writers such as Amy Tan and Terry Teachout breaking the book into chapters, but the photos are arranged around prominently displayed salient facts about American life, such as how much TV we watch a day or that the average American woman has one hour less free time per day than the average American man (I tried to hide that page from my wife).

It's a book that's supposed to teach us about us, and Rick wants readers to make it their own -- literally. The book has a companion Web site, MyAmericaAtHome.com, where you can order the book with your own photo as a customized cover. Since this is all about domestic life, I tried it out with a photo of my nephew at the ice cream shop instead of my professional work:

As you can see, the process is well-designed and easy to understand, showing how the final product will look with the headline and logo, as well as whether your photo will have enough resolution to make a good cover print. It's not only an easy process, but a bit addictive, so be careful lest you order 20 different copies of the same book.

This book represents an important topic well-handed, and a copy will be sure to grace my coffee table.
[...]

This is a book for the whole family to page through and read together. It will be particularly appealing to children, since the material is not only appropriate for them - it is heavily focused on how the family is structured around the daily routine of kids.

The book celebrates our diversity. We are a much more complex country than the rest of the world gives us credit for. We are not uni-dimensional, by a long stretch. We have many regional and micro-cultures and a broad spectrum of lifestyles, habits and opinions.
In this book, Rick and Jennifer give a unique, respectful and gentle insight into people's homes and the things they care about. The camera sees the deep ties that bind all those people to their homes, their pets, their things, their landscape and, most importantly, to each other.

We see conservative households in the heartland, both Christians and Muslims, that home-school their children, read the Holy Book, and celebrate their faith in their families. We see recent immigrants trying to adapt to America, scrape a living here, while remaining profoundly attached to, and nostalgic of their ancestral traditions. We see conservative same-sex couples loving their children and struggling with their busy lives. We see affluent folks on the two Coasts embracing modernity and new age ideals. We see diverse dreams of happiness, technology, tradition, community and the counter-culture.

We see the immense mosaic of resources, cultures and moral ideals in our beautiful country, something to celebrate joyfully. As both John McCain and Barack Obama point out, we are about an ideal greater than ourselves, about service to family, our neighbors, and our country. This book is a lovely witness to this ideal.

What a wonderful book. APACHE is beautiful.

What a beautiful book. It's really stunning. I'm envious. I hope the publisher does as well with it as I think they should.

APACHE is a beautiful, really beautiful book.

APACHE: The Sacred Path to Womanhood is magnificent. It, the photography and writing, deserves an award.

Apache is graphic & well-told as a photo story, which is rare indeed.

Dr. Nibley is Brilliant! Simply brilliant! Everything that he says in this book is outstanding. Face it people, both LDS and non-LDS, we simply cannot hope to dream about living in Zion based on the current situation that the world is in. We, as human beings, are simply too greedy to do so. And Zion is based completely on the idea that greed and money are non-existent. We cannot have Zion with the current political and economic mess that we have created, and Dr. Nibley shows us why. To the non-LDS reader, Dr. Nibley shows the joy in building Zion and the danger in denying it. To the LDS reader, Dr. Nibley shows the danger of denying the knowledge that they have gained by being exposed to the principles of Zion. He also details the principles of Zion and how people must live and dwell in Zion in order for the system and Law of Consecration to work. And he gives some very interesting history in detailing the history of Zion, including the city of Enoch. So this was a fantastic book written by an excellent scholar.

Hugh Nibley, iconoclast extraordinaire, is at his best in this wonderful collection of essays and talks that try to shake people out of their comfort zone. This book is far and away the most readable of all Nibley's works and could be the most gripping non-fiction book I have ever read.

The basic thrust of the book is that people today (Mormons not exempt) are focused on making money, and this has led to the ignoring of more important things. Nibley has great talks on The Law of Consecration, Spiritual Gifts, and working at the right things. It is fair to say that this book has been one of the most influential of my life (I have read it several times over since first reading it 3 years ago).

This is Hugh Nibley at his most personal and most challenging. Here he expresses his faith, insights, and commitment to trusting the Lord and taking his covenants most seriously. He hammers home again and again that we receive everything from the Lord and that we are blind to many of the blessings we have all around us. We refuse to take them because we are after the things of this world and are of no worth, though we have been warned to turn away from them.

Dr. Nibley implores us to begin living the Law of Consecration. He gives us no quarter. We know what it means, we know how to do it, and we know the covenants we have made. We also know the promises the Lord has made to us concerning this Law. I don't know about you, but I find this beyond what I can do understand or do in my current circumstances. Yet, I feel the need to ponder what the author is telling me and to move towards this principle of life.

These are essays and papers that were written since the 1970s. Many are published here for the first time (unless you read them as papers from FARMS). As I say, these are very challenging writings. Not because they are hard to understand, but because they are challenging in very serious ways. Dr. Nibley takes the gospel very seriously and literally. He points out to us that we have too often inverted values to our detriment. He deplores the way education has changed and that learning and thinking have been replaced by feeling and degree accumulation.

The last few essays in the book are among the most directly challenging to our present way of life. His discussion of Aristotle's notion of goods of first and second intent is wide-ranging and quite informative. The last essay on the atonement is quite beautiful and insightful. I think my favorite essay is his funeral address for one of his friends.

Nibley's plain speaking about his faith in the atonement and the challenge it presents us for our lives here on earth and in eternity is inspiring. The writings here bear careful reading and re-reading and then meditation. You will have to change your life if you take them seriously. And that is unsettling and that is what we ask teachers to do: to shake up our lives.

Dr. Nibley continues his great teaching.

ONCE AGAIN HUGH NIBLEY DOES IT AGAIN. HE IS MAGNIFICENT IN HIS RESEARCH AND COMPREHENSIVE CLARITY MAKING THE ISSUES BEING DISCUSSED CLEAR AND PRECISE.

And that title says *alot*, coming from me. Covey's book was life changing for me, but ended up proving to be merely a precursor (albeit an excellent one) to "Approaching Zion."

I agree with the above sentiments that this is a trans-denominational text (though it obviously focuses on the LDS--a.k.a "Mormons"), and, quite frankly, this book altered my view of my world as radically as "7 Habits" did; after 27 years, I finally begin to have a much more clear cut idea of what my beliefs entail-- and a real desire to follow through with those beliefs.

Over the past year, since reading it, I've felt closer to my God (as I was stimulated to live my religion more fully), and have carried through with the inspiration to seek deeper knowledge and understanding about life and its many facets.

I honestly wish I had read--and taken to heart-- "Approaching Zion" before going to college; it would have had a remarkable impact on the way I'd have gone about my education.

Top ratings for "Approaching Zion."

I love that I can just skim through this book & find the information that I need. It is really basic - clearly written with great examples. After being away from work for 8 years & being out of school for almost 20, it was a great refresher! Besides, Max proves that even geeks can have a sense of humor!

As a student finishing my B.S. in Computer Science, I very badly needed something to liven up my CPU architecture and discrete math classes, which were horribly boring.

This book not only did a GREAT job of clarifying the finer points of boolean logic, but somehow managed make it interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to understand the nuts-and-bolts behind what makes your computer tick.

Maxfield's book is unique, both in format and in content. And I'm not just talking about the gumbo recipe at the end.

The first section, almost 150 pages, is "logic lite." It starts with transistors, both MOS and bipolar. From there it works its way up to simple latches and such, and scratches the surface of state machines, with side trips to boolean arithmetic and such. The breezy, informal style will work for people put off by more academic treatments, but the logic design content stops way short of what any other basic logic text would present.

The second, longer section covers material sorely missing from all other logic texts I know. It starts with the simpler parts of silicon fab process, then goes through all kinds of printed circuits and hybrid packages giving a fair tour of the basic printed curcuit (PC) processes that were current when the book was written (1995). It even goes into gutsy stuff like the copper patterns in PC processes that have to do with heat flow during soldering. All those real-world facts earned this book an extra star. The "far out technology" chapter at the end is an interesting read, too, with its discussions of nano, optical, and molecular computing.

The book's weaknesses are significant, though. It would work well with any of several companion texts that would cover what this misses. That includes more advanced logic techniques, like alternatives to gate-level implementation and all the fussy bits of state machines. A standard logic text (e.g. Katz) would fill in those blanks. Going in a different direction, it does only a little towards talking about how PC layout interacts with logic design. More about ground planes, guard rings, power decoupling, RF emissions, etc. would fit well with the detail presented here, espcially when you see how much time and effort it already spends on "vias" vs. "holes." The little bit of analog discussion from the front would help here - why inductive effects matter at high frequencies, why distributed capacitance is different from lumped, why you'd have a high-value and low-value capacitor in parallel, and why that ceramic cap near the power input has a saw cut in the edge. A third possible direction would be the way Wirth's book on circuit design for CS students went: into the higher levels of design, letting tools attend to the lower levels. The biggest flaw is in treating FPGAs as exotic, out-there technology - by 1995, they were well into the main stream, and have very nearly killed off discrete logic and ASICs in many areas.

If you just want a light-weight intro to logic design and to the physical circuits that carry it, this is OK. It could have been better in all directions and, at this 2005 writing, you should check it's sell-by date. I gave it the fourth star for addressing PCs and mounting at all, not for addressing them well.

//wiredweird

Considering this book deals with what I consider to be rocket science at best and black magic at worst I think it does a really good job of explaining things. I'm still working through it and it still makes my head hurt but I recommend this for anyone like me who wants to understand this stuff and has zero background to do so.

I grew up watching my neighbor, a mechanic, work on cars and it helped me pick up the basics. When I would try to take apart a transistor radio and figure out how it worked I was left with an assortment of colorful bits and no clues. This book is the remedy for my total ignorance of things electronic. Just how good it is I do not know due to my lack of knowledge in the field. I reccomend it to any interested beginners.