E Books

A lot of American heroes such as fire fighters aren't really recognized by anyone because no one really takes the time to notice them. This book makes you really realize how much some people really do for our country. This book helps you realize that. Fire fighters and other people in general help out us. They should feel proud and good about themselves because they are in this awesomely known book. This book talks about the incident that happened on the September 11th 2001 and how so many people lost their loved ones. Millions of people answered the call, rallying together with an outpouring of courage. It talks about how people came together to help with the horrible incident that happened.


I would definitely recommend this book to anyone no matter what age because it's about our country working together when something tragic happened to our country.

I was a little surprised to see so many mixed reviews about this book, but then again it is fairly easy to see why. I have received many letters of response from readers since the book was published, the subject of most being thus: "As much as I had convinced myself that I had come to grips with the events of 9-11, as much as I had led myself to believe that I had cried my last tear of grief... I had no way of comprehending the whole picture until I read this book..." What makes this particular book different from others in the series: You don't have to be a pet-lover, a teacher or a child to feel a bond with the people in the stories, you just need to be an American ... or simply human for that matter. I don't recommend buying this book for yourself, I recommend buying it for yourself, your children, your grandchildren and every future generation that will hopefully never need to feel the sense of pain, love, selflessness, companionship and grief that yourself and the people in this book lived through. That's why I bought it. I want to save and share the American spirit. -Ann Marguerite Swank, Author, "How the Children Help" from "Chicken Soup For The Soul Of America: Stories to Heal the Heart of Our Nation."

Read this when you need a good cry or a smile.

Read this when you need a good cry or a smile.

When I got this book, I didn't know what I would get into. These stories are powerful, healing, patriotic stories that you will only find in this book. You will find each story has it's own kind of sparkle, and it's very special in it's own way. You will feel for these stories and to the people in them. Plus, you will feel so proud to be an American. It's a great book to get, you may even heal yourself. Get this book, whether you are young or old, there is a story for everyone in this book.

The Children of the Lens are the culmination of the Arisian breeding program, and are to be their weapons in the final assault on Eddore.

Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa MacDougall have had four children. Born with the abilities Kim possesses, these kids will become the 'third stage' with an ability to join their minds in an all-powerful gestalt.

They are talented enough that they can shadow the Second Stage Lensmen without them knowing, and help them out. Each of the four has a favorite among the Second Stage Lensmen, even if they won't admit it.

This book has a different feel, in that it is a tiny bit focused on family, and the mental war part of it means the insane space battles are a much smaller part of the whole thing.

The end is the final battle between the Arisians and the Eddorians, with the third-stage Kinnison gestalt as an important part of the assault.

Afterwards, what the Arisians tells the Children comes as a bit of a surprise.

All six books went fast and furious...but what reading!!! Terrific stuff! Smith definitely had the jets to tell one of the best yarns in all of science fiction. All the other reviewers citing how later movies, series, and stories were influenced by these books...WERE RIGHT!!! One of the best science fiction series you will ever read. Period.

Galaxies wide adventure. This is the last book of the Lensman series. While the book can stand alone, the earlier Lensman books lead up to this conclusion where the combined mind powers of the Lensman children, together with super science manage to defeat the super villains for the victory of good over evil.
E.E. Smith wrote these books around the middle of the century, and some of the writing style appears less sophisticated than current authors. However, I enjoyed the extremely positive depiction of the human nature and future - similarly to what the author did this in the Skylark series. Highly recommended..

Having started the six book series with Triplanetary and ending here, I thought the series started to trail off after Galactic Patrol. Triplanetary has been heavily criticized as giving away too much of the series and of the pro- and antagonists too soon. However when the Eddorians are finally confronted here I didn't feel as much as a build up to their powers as Triplanetary instilled. In Triplanetary you really felt that the Eddorians were almost omnipotent beings and the task before the Arisians in seeding planets, including Earth, preparing for the eventual confrontation to save Civilization. Galactic Patrol really carried on the beginning of the series with Kimball Kinnison, but I thought the quality dwindled starting with Gray Lensman and the dated 50's slang really picked up then. It's not just because it's written in the 50's, I've recently read several works by Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clarke, and others written in the 50's and they have no where near this level of 50's slang.

Another thing I started to find unappealing is Smith's heavy regard for the `wide girth' of Kinnison and of his space-ax swinging cohorts. In reality, strong ambition comes often from those that have not been so physically gifted in life and so have to fight their entire lives against people's initial reactions to their appearance. Lois McMaster Bujold's Mountains of Mourning of a diminutive protagonist's personal battle against his grandfather's attitude, and possible disgust, of his physical stature comes to mind. So it is with irony that I can picture some skinny kid sitting outside in the 50's reading this book and `barrel-shaped chests" as the big neighbor kids come up to him and say `hey poindexter, whatcha reading...' or something.

However, the originality, and impact this series had upon science fiction cannot be understated and is why I am giving it a respectable four stars. Several reviewers have mentioned that they can see scenes from Star Wars lifted from this series. What I see even more so is what Star Trek lifted from this series. Even down to small details such as a ship having to lower shields in order to fire a weapon against an enemy. And many other movies, tv shows, and books influenced comes to mind including Alien, The 5th Element, Heinlein, certainly the original Star Trek as well as the Next Generation and Deep
Space 9, Wing Commander and others.

255 Pages, Publ 1954.

I have read this series at least 4 times. If you like SCIFI, you will cherish these books and buy the whole collection (as I did).

This book was very helpful for my 4000 level Neuro class that I had to take. It took me back to the simple basics that I somehow never had or forgot and built from there, showing how the basic developed into the more complex structures. The simple explainations for different structures also includes functions which I need as a Psyc. major. No coronal views are included, but the other views are very helpful. Grab your colored pencils & have fun!

I bought this book to help my bachelor level students learn the parts of the brain. They found it helpful in their learning process to color the parts of the brain. Although, because they are bachelor level students, there were only a few pages that were surface knowledge...lots of detailed pictures that would be more appropriate for doctorate level.

This is a must for anyone interested in learning about the anatomy of the human brain.

It is also essential for anyone studying physiological and / or biopsychology.

I teach an interdisciplinary course in psychology and neuroscience, and my psych students have found this book helpful for getting up to speed on neuroanatomy. I've also started using some of the pages as overheads during my lectures, since the diagrams are uncluttered and easy to draw on.

I'm writing a review because I thought I should mention that I found this book *much* more useful than its better-known competitor. The other book has more fine-grained anatomical detail, of the sort that would be most useful to someone studying to be a neurosurgeon - but the result is that it's very hard for a casual student to tell what's worth studying or remembering. This book does a much better job of focusing on the important structures, the ones that you're likely to see mentioned in popular science books and articles. The second half (Functional Neuroanatomy, with chapters devoted to the systems subserving different functions) is especially useful.

For anyone interested in self-study, or who just wants a quick reference source for neural structures that they see mentioned in other texts, I'd strongly recommend this book.

If you loved your third grade art class, you'll love this brain coloring book. The truth is we learn by doing, using our hands, applying colors. Many areas of the brain are involved in what we think of as simple learning tasks. Adding manual tasks to learning the complicated anatomy of the brain strengthens the learning process - forces you to linger over the page and get involved in learning the structures.

I feel the text on each facing page is quite useful but could have been a little more detailed on the clinical end. You will come out of the 'coloring book' experience with far greater confidence in your understanding of neuroanatomy than you expected. You may find reading on neuropsychology a good deal easier, now that you have, in effect, overstudied the anatomy and physiiology underlying it.

For those who want to go beyond this text to a really superior text in this subject, I highly recommend Clinical Neuroanatomy by FitzGerald and Fokan-Curran published by W. B. Saunders. It is already marvelously colored and illustrated with much greater detail and clinical information. It is an exceptional medical text (and priced accordingly). The medical illustration, scans, photos and other teaching aids are excellent and profuse. The coloring book is just a sort of 'boot camp' to prepare you for this. I have not seen a better text on neuroanatomy. If you are seriously in need of learning or reviewing your knowledge of this subject, this is the one.

ADDENDA: I have just read Pinel's other excellent work called BIOPSYCHOLOGY. Illustrated by his partner (sic) Maggie - superbly and contributing greatly to the success of the book as a great teaching medium in neuropsychology and neurology. It is a textbook for undergraduates in Psychology and assumes little in previous physiology and anatomy, using extensive explanations of vocabulary and concepts. Frankly, you might as well buy this one instead of the coloring book. It will cost more but you will get a lot more out of it along with the same high quality of illustrations necessary to understand this challenging subject. John Pinel has an engaging writing style, some surprising personal anecdotes, and many case histories. I highly recomment BIOPSYCHOLOGY.

The simplicity, yet thoroughness, which he uses to explain one of the more difficult topics in engineering and mathematics shows that Dr. Hershey is a true expert in the field. I highly recomend this book for both the novice and the advanced reader.

Cryptography Demystified is a great intro guide to cryptography, well worth its price.

If you can make sense of this then you'll be able to make sense of the rest of the book (From Module 4):

Prob[p(t)=1lc(t)={Prob[c(t)=1lp(t)=1]Prob[p(t)=1]}/{Prob[c(t)=1]}
Now,
Prob[c(t)=1lp(t)=1]=Prob[k(t)=0]
and
Prob[c(t)=1]=Prob[p(t)=1]Prob[k(t)=0]+Prob[p(t)=0]Prob[k(t)=1]
therefore,
Prob[p(t)=1lc(t)=1]={prob[k(t)=0]Prob[p(t)=1]}/{Prob[p(t)=1]Prob[k(t)=0}+Prob[p(t)=0]Prob[k(t)=1]}

This book is slanted towards more theory and math than others that deal in practicality, for instance "Cryptography for Dummies". But if you have a solid foundation in mathematics and have the temporal ability to "quantinize" then this is a fantastic book. I would speculate this book is meant for graduate comp. sci/eng coursework as it is broken down into 35 Modules with problem solving exercises at the end of each. At any rate, good luck!

This book was used in a course I took taught by the author, Dr. John Hershey. I have read and own several books in this category, am working to obtain two advanced degrees in the field of computer security, and feel that I have enough information to write an objective review. It is an excellent introduction book to the general area of cryptography, but suffers from several shortcomings.

If you do not know much about what cryptography and encryption are, this book should provide a decent introduction. The book provides the mathematical concepts needed to understand the chapters, but I felt it did not cover enough detail or provide enough examples to let me feel I had a solid understanding of everything.

There are three aspects to cryptography: authentication, integrity, and verification. This book only discusses integrity issues, i.e. encryption. DES, RSA, and Diffie-Hellman are discussed, but a detailed covering of AES is noticibly absent. It covers integrity rather well, breaking down the different methods of using block encryption into separate chapters. In other words, DES operation in electronic codebook, output feedback, and cipher feedback modes are three different chapters. This is something that isn't usually done and is a rather nice touch. It makes it much easier to learn the advantages and disadvantages for each mode of operation.

In terms of total mathematical theory, Hershey's book does not contain much theory. If you want theory, I recommend you find William Stallings book titled "Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice." Also, Hershey's book does not contain code to let you start programming a security system. If you want applications, I recommend you find Bruce Schneier's book titled "Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C." Those books are for advanced readers, however, and may be difficult to understand if you don't know the area.

Overall, it is a good read. I recommend it more for IT people than computer scientists or engineers simply because it touches upon the topic, instead of being very detailed. Look at the editorial review section criteria for who should read the book, it is right for the most part.

If you are looking to expand your mind, think about learning Cryptography. It is an excellent discipline to help you think in new ways. If you decide you want to learn Cryptography, this is the book for you. The book is written in modules, making it easy to digest. The book is equally suitable for a formal classroom or self-study environment. Using the book for self study is enhanced by the modular format, superb clarity of the teaching, the well-explained answers to the problems, and the appropriately injected humor. People that need to learn Cryptography will undoubtedly have this book on their shelf, whether they are an expert or beginner. I would like to speak to the people that don't need to learn Cryptography - this book is for you too, as you will enjoy learning the thought processes of Cryptography that will enhance your creativity in any field. This book is a gift.

Why all the 5 star reviews? Am I really that picky or is everyone else that easy? Did we read the same book, I mean the WHOLE over 1,000 big pages? Well enough questions, there were some really excellent stories in this compilation namely "The Crowd", "The Autopsy", "Sticks", "Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper", "Dread", "How Love Came To Professor Guildia", "MacIntosh Willy", sadly those were in the minority. Some stories as in most compilations this vast were from early 1900's and the language requires careful reading to interpret the words or phrases used in those times. Also so many stories stacked side by side with winners like those mentioned above seemed to have almost nothing at all to do with horror and left me completely bored such as "The Asian Shore", "night side", others were just about unreadable and must have been included on a bet or a favor of some sort such as "The Jolly Corner" and "Larger Than Oneself". Glad I only paid over $6 from an Amazon Marketplace shop instead of the $29.95 cover price.

Part of a larger series that takes a look at various types of horror writing, with an introduction giving some detail and thoughts on the topic, as well as to each author and story.

This is a good collection, and is well to the ghost story end of the spectrum, in general.

Fabulous Formless Darkness : Smoke Ghost - Fritz Leiber
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Seven American Nights - Gene Wolfe
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Signal-Man - Charles Dickens
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Crouch End - Stephen King
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Night-Side - Joyce Carol Oates
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Seaton's Aunt - Walter de la Mare
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Clara Militch - Ivan Turgenev
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Repairer of Reputations - Robert W. Chambers
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Beckoning Fair One - Oliver Onions
Fabulous Formless Darkness : What Was It? - Fitz-James O'Brien
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Beautiful Stranger - Shirley Jackson
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Damned Thing - Ambrose Bierce
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Afterward - Edith Wharton
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Willows - Algernon Blackwood
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Asian Shore - Thomas M. Disch
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Hospice - Robert Aickman
Fabulous Formless Darkness : A Little Something for Us Tempunauts - Philip K. Dick


Spectral look.

3.5 out of 5


Play things.

3.5 out of 5


Danger light haunting.

4 out of 5


Mythos scoffer mortality.

4 out of 5


Seance surprise.

3.5 out of 5


Ghost house.

3.5 out of 5


Poisoned woman not all gone.

3.5 out of 5


PR work not nice, free death not popular.

4 out of 5


Loopy writer problems.

4 out of 5


Nightmare rather solid it appears.

4 out of 5


Our house got lost.

3 out of 5


Invisible monster.

4 out of 5


Ghost visit.

3 out of 5


Wind in the tree monsters.

4.5 out of 5


Turkish twists.

3 out of 5


Lodging lacks lager and fun.

3 out of 5


Time to avoid own deaths.

4 out of 5

Disaster! That super-secret hush-hush Project the military was supposed to have under control has torn a rift into another dimension just ten miles from town, and maniacal flesh-hungry monsters are pouring through by the score, tearing their shrieking victims apart and turning the world as you know it into a charnel house. You've got to pack up and get outta Dodge quick---but what to take? Clothes, boots, food, hunting knife, guns and ammo, extra fuel cans, chainsaw---oh, and if you're a horror junkie like me, you've gotta have reading material during the Siege, right? And since you'll be holing up a long time---maybe forever---the tome you choose had better be a good one.

Forced to haul one single volume off your horror shelf before you pack everything into the heavily armored civvie Hum-Vee, I would choose David G. Hartwell's masterful compilation "The Dark Descent." This Leviathan of a book is chock-full of more than one-thousand pages of the best horror ever written by some of the Grand-Masters of the genre (H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Stephen King, M.R. James) and some of their lesser known adepts and apprentices. For such a modest price, having this much shivery, ghoulish goodness stuffed between the covers is nearly an embarrassment of riches.

Anthologies are often treacherous ground, and success hinges on an editor's style and judgment. Hartwell demonstrates his impeccable taste and considerable acuity in the selections he makes; best of all he begins the collection with a remarkably astute, entertaining---and mercifully concise---little essay tracing the evolution of the terror and horror tale. Certainly we are treated to the seminal classics of the genre, and a few of the tales are overly represented in many other collections---but as horror crown jewels, they have their place here. H.P. Lovecraft is represented by two ensanguined ambassadors: "The Call of Cthulhu", a sweeping account of global panic, terror and slaughter spread by the resurgence of a primitive cult of an obscure Squid-God, and the Poe-esque "The Rats in the Walls". M.R. James has a less auspicious presence, "The Ash-Tree" being one of his less powerful works and an inadequate introduction to the Master.

Hartwell's King selections are slightly puzzling; "The Reach" is too languid for its own good, while "The Monkey" is tacky and underawing---but then Hartwell knocks it out of the ballfield with the relatively rare Lovecraftian "Crouch End" which, serves up a viciously psychedelic and very different side of King, to say nothing of providing a little side-trip to a part of London (thankfully) not on any map.

Karl Edward Wagner's "Sticks" presages by a quarter-century the discovery of liches in the woods by "Blair Witch"'s unlucky film students, Clive Barker details an experiment in mortal terror gone horribly awry in "Dread", Joyce Carol Oates proves there is a fate worse than Death in "Night-Side", and Lucy Clifford chronicles what happens to naughty little children in "The New Mother".

There are at least ten riveting tales of vintage dread here, any one of which justifies the price of admission. If you haven't met late British terror-writer Robert Aickman, you have three opportunities in "Dark Descent", although "The Hospice" is by far the most ambiguous---and disquieting. "Seven American Nights", an apocalyptic travelogue written by a young Turkish man traveling through a wasted and genetically twisted future America, is by turns terrifying, acutely repulsive, and melancholy, a peculiarly potent spiked little horror-potion cloaked as travelogue by fantasy master Gene Wolfe. Taken together with Thomas Disch's disorienting "The Asian Shore", they might make you rethink getting away from the tour group the next time you spelunk through a strange land.

Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" conjures up the horror of the spheres that's moved its haunts to remote islands in the Danube; Walter de la Mare's "Seaton's Aunt" is a rich, deliciously unhinged little crawlfest instantly recognizable to anyone who has forced himself through an unpleasant evening with an unctuous, intimidating in-law.

Hartwell includes a number of authors who rarely ventured into the horror genre: William Faulkner does Southern Gothic proud in "A Rose for Emily", Flannery O'Connor demonstrates the wisdom of never judging a book---even a Bible---by its cover in "Good Country People", and Edith Wharton whips up a kind of delayed-blast spook in "Afteward"---to say nothing of writing one of the finest ghost tales of all time.

Hartwell makes some missteps, perhaps unavoidable in such a massive collection. Bishop's "Within the Walls of Tyre" is pretentious and dull, and "The Roaches", "If Damon Comes", and Philip K. Dick's time-twisting "Little Something for us Tempunauts" may give you chills, but they left me cold and bored. But these are forgivable lapses in a collection so varied and rich.

One story in particular that I can't stop thinking about is Michael Shea's unexpected, grisly little delight "The Autopsy", about an aging, cancerous coroner called to a remote mountain town to conduct autopsies on the bodies of miners killed in a mysterious mine explosion---and who rapidly, terrifyingly shifts roles from examiner to subject. It's not a perfect story---not in style, nor even in its final revelation---but that said it's nasty, and remorselessly surgical, and you'll never forget it. Like most of the darksome little nuggets of terror in this vast volume, it's like a tooth you've had removed---you can't stop yourself from digging your tongue into the raw, fleshy gap.

So remember---as civilization collapses and the howls of the mutated and deranged grow closer to your hideaway, throw the bolts, load the rifle, and tuck yourself in with "The Dark Descent"---at least you'll have the ultimate grimoire containing the very finest tales of terror until those crafty army scientists come up with a solution to save the day. And if they don't? Well, you *do* have 1,000 pages to tide you over.

This huge, (topping out at just over 1000 pages!) collection of some of the finest tales from the masters of horror has it all. It was wonderful to read works I had not encountered over the years, along with some of the classics of the genre. Some personal favorites were the Lovecraftian "Crouch End" (King), a truly bizarre and unclassifiable tale, "The Swords" (Aickman), a masterful work of understated horror, "The Summer People" (Jackson), and a classic ghost story, "The Beckoning Fair One" (Onions) A one stop shop for the fan of all things scary.

This publication rivals most of the horror/ mystery compilations printed elsewhere. Some of the most consequential and prolific ink slingers of the creepy and the dreary are featured here, and they don't disappoint.

Here, in this volume, you will find it all. The works of King, Bradbury, Jackson, Lovecraft, Poe and many others are at your reading pleasure. Some of my personal favorites: The Beach (King); The Call of the Cthulhu (Lovecraft); Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (Bloch)...I could go on for ever.

I love this book. It should be required reading for all undergraduate and graduate business students. I'll be looking for Windham's next book.

I must congratulate Ms. Windham on her excellent book "Dead Ahead". I think I must have read it more than three times by now. I am a consultant and my company is involved in web design and development. On many of my assignments, I relied on this book as a guide and many of her ideas have worked very well with my clients.

Our company provides e-commerce and web presence solutions. We use "Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business" by Laurie Windham extensively to help us provide effective solutions for our clients.

Dead Ahead covers the 'new rules' of web-based commerce, from using existing businesses and strategies to succeed to establishing recognition and associations via the internet. Important chapters on investing in the right technology and conducting e-business make for important insights on the rules and atmosphere of the web.

This was used as a text book in my e-business MBA class and would recommend it to others outside of class. It covered a lot of issues relevant to the topic. I enjoy reading books like this that are up-to-date in a dynamic industry.

This book may work with a Civil War Unit for upper elementary or higher. Students may find this book to be a clever and fascinating book. Although the letter-format is fictional, the book tells a true story. A black woman and a white woman worked for the Union cause. This book may not be appropriate to read cover to cover to a class, but it could be interesting to do so. Just one letter a day, for example, would carry the discussion the entire year. The book could prompt many different kinds of discussions, including ones about historical figures.

I read the book Dear Ellen Bee. It is by Mary E. Lyons and Muriel M. Branch. I would give this book four stars because it was good but there is not a lot of adventure. The story is about a young black girl named Miss Bet. She wants to became a teacher so she moves to a big city and she can not wait to go home, sence she is almost finshied school. When she is done with school she can not go home because something has happen to her home. They are taking the blacks for slaves so she has to stay there and try to be careful of her life. If you want to know what happens then you have to read the book for your self. I would recammend this book to 13-16 year olds because it is really hard to understand at first. I hope you read this book for your self so you can see how good it is.

Dear Ellen Bee is a very exciting story. It contains a lot of action and suspense. I enjoyed this book very much. I liked it a lot. I like reading books about the Civil War. Anyone who likes action reading with a personal touch would LOVE this book.

Dear Ellen Bee is a very exciting story. It contains a lot of action and suspense. I enjoyed this book very much. I liked it a lot. I like reading books about the Civil War. Anyone who likes action reading with a personal touch would LOVE this book.

Liza, a freed slave, hates having her life all planned out for her. She thanks Miss Bet for freeing her but she doesn't want Miss Bet to plan her life for her. After returning from school in Phildelphia and after getting married to a free black call Wilson she finally gets to live her own life. So when Miss Bet comes up to her to plee for her help in the fight against the Rebels in Richmond she is hesitant. Working at the rebel's president's house is going to be one hard thing for Liza to do. However her decision is finally made up when she sees how the Rebels treat her husband Wilson. When he finally escapes to the North and joins the Union army Liza begins her spying in the President's Residence. Through secret codes and letters she and Miss Bet use the code name Ellen Bee to communicate.

Written in diary from with drawing and scrapes from hear and there this book was really a very good book that gave great insight into the minds of two Union spies. I recommend anyone who likes this book to read the Dear America Series which is also historical novels written in diary form about different girl's lives in different parts of history.

this is a very charming tale of this mean girl who adopts this boys cat when his dad develops an allergy.he misses the cat so much he goes over to thier house all the time.one day dinky hockers[WHAT A NAME!]cousin same over and the boy and her fall in love.her name is natalia line.shes a schizophrennic who rhymes all her sentences and words when under stress.its a wonderful story that has a "to kill a mockingbird" like charm to it.not the bad stuff but the parts where the kids are just bein g kids.i fell in love with this story right away.it will always have a place in my heart.

It has been seven years since I was assigned to read this book for my eighth grade class and I stll think about it to this day. The book has a way of drawing you in to their everyday routine. I am sure I still have the book somewhere in my room, but I just can't find it.

I read this book when I was in junior high school. That was over 30 years ago and I still remember it and how well I could relate to the struggles of teen life. If you are a teenager considering this book or a parent considering buying it for your child, do not hesitate. After all, though I am a pretty smart and well educated person, this is the only book (I'm serious here) that left a lasting impression on me from the K-12 years. It's gotta be special.

Books written by adults for adults that talk about politics usually want you to pigeonhole them. Once you understand the gist of the bookýs take on life and liberty you can decide whether or not its politics are the same as yours, thereby allowing you to instantly love it or hate it without even reading it. Books written by adults for children or teens that talk about politics also usually want you to pigeonhole them. So went my thinking until I read "Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!". Ladies and gentlemen, I have just changed my worldview on politics in childrenýs books. And itýs all thanks to this little number.

A plot synopsis. This is a story about Tucker Woolf, his family, his friends, and his friendsý families. In New York city, Tucker is fifteen years old and for the first time in his life heýs seriously interested in a girl. This interest isnýt without its complications. The girl, Natalia, attends a school for the mentally imbalanced. And her cousin, Dinky Hocker, has issues of her own. Dinky is overweight, an unsurprising fact when you consider her negligent, often cruel, parents. From this unlikely set of characters comes a story about dealing with the problems of others, as well as yourself. Kerr could have easily taken the easy route with this book. How simple it would be to turn this plot into an After School Special, complete with everyone a little older and wiser at the end. Instead, the author meets such ooey-gooey sentiments head on, challenging the hypocrisy people exhibit every day. Along the way, other issues are brought up as well. Originally conceived and published in 1972, the book deals with politics. Everyoneýs parent is a liberal of the 60s, though how they display this political leaning differs per person. When we meet the radical P. John, Dinkyýs brief beau, the reader is suddenly shown a human being that doesnýt fit neatly into any real category. P. John is conservative, racist, intolerant, and honest. To read his character is to question everything the book is saying about the political climate of this country. But if you really read this book, really examine whatýs itýs saying, itýs clear as crystal that there is no single political stance taken in this story. People are not all one thing or another. Not all liberals are whining wimps waiting for a handout. Not all conservatives remain unchanging and unsympathetic. I can see how people would love this book and how people would hate this book. All I ask of you is that you find yourself intrigued by this review and decide to actually read this book. Draw your own conclusions. Decide Iým insanely wrong or absolutely correct. The point is, this book should never be forgotten. It is so well written, so interesting and full of great points that I canýt even give you a glimpse of what it really means. Youýll just have to find out for yourself.

This book starts out as being the story of Tucker Woolf, self-apointed expert on libraries, and cronicler of strange existences. But it soon turns out that it is actually the story of four young teenagers, and, on a broader scale, their parents and their entire society.
Tucker has to deal with having a faher who cares too much about apearances, and drills Tucker into only revealing parts of the truth when dealing with strangers. Tucker is feels somewhat out of place wherever he is, and when he finds a stray cat he imediately bonds with it. When his dad turns out to be allergic, he has to give the cat away. It is this cat who, directly and inderectly, brings him into contact with the other characters. It is adopted by Dinky Hocker, a tragically overweight girl, whose parents completely ignore their daughters problems, in favour of helping drug-addicts and othe worthy causes. Her cousin Natalie, and a boy who shares Dinkys rather enormous problem, together form the core of the story.

The book is funny, the characters quirky and the situations somwhat absurd, but the real fascination of this book comes from seeing how the parents of these children forget them in favour of either their own problems or the problems of strangers. The thing that struck me most is that Dinkys charity-mom is actually one of the most selfish people in the world. I would recomend this book to anyone, even though it is technically a YA-novel. Its a good read, all the same.

I was mainly interested in the MES implementation part and I found those chapters quite inspiring. We are usually lead by "common practices" which form our experience and we'll use them throughout our work. But formalizing and being able to communicate a technology is always an issue (unless you're going to di it all by yourself).
Excellent.

"Domain Specific..." is another excellent book from the "Fraemwork collection". It is a set comprehensive reference books as well as a authoritative textbooks by experts in this growing research field.

The description of practical experiences as well as more conceptual descriptions, are usefull to understand the complexity of achieving high levels of software reusability.

Managers and academics, will find a lot of material to help them decide if this is the way to go. Our research group in Web Engineering at the University of Sydney (weg.ee.usyd.edu.au) will us it extensively to improve our development practices.

An almost indispensable 3-volume reading to understand the success of framework technologies in today's software systems. The books include most of the top
articles on the subject, providing a thorough insight in both design and implementation issues regarding frameworks, also complemented with practical experience
about framework usage. Although the work is mainly concentrated on technical aspects, the articles are comprehensible enough to be taken as reference material by
a broad community, for example, software engineers, programmers, or technology managers. The books are useful for anybody planning to include
framework-based techniques in software development processes or planning to improve current object-oriented practices. It is also an excellent source for graduate
courses.

Volume 1 lays the fundamental concepts supporting object-oriented frameworks, and describes the problems and challenges that this
technology raises in software development. The book covers topics such as domain analysis, development concepts and approaches,
documentation, and management, among others. Of course, the compilation of articles makes some parts little redundant, but this is a minor detail compared with the
fruitful contributions made by the book. In particular, the articles on reusing hooks, hot-spot-driven development, composing modeling frameworks in Catalysis, and
composition problems, causes and solutions, are a sample of the outstanding level of this work. Each chapter adds at the end a number of related questions and
student projects aiming to reinforce concepts and promote further investigation. As a comment, novice readers should take the sections concerning hooks and
hot-spots carefully because these topics are presented in a slightly confusing way.

Volume 2 focuses on specific framework implementations, dealing with existing frameworks for different application domains, such as businesses, multi-agent
systems, languages and system software. In this book, the readers will find a level of detail much closer to specific implementations issues than in the previous
volume. Nonetheless, the writing style remains mostly clear and accessible for a quite broad audience. The case-studies and experience reports described by the
articles show an attractive industrial perspective of the framework approach, and more important, they go an step forward in the road of a more mature discipline for
software development. In addition, a
CD-Rom with concrete examples of these applications is included with the book.

Volume 3 completes this series with a number of domain-specific application frameworks developed by industry, showing how to apply the concepts and ideas of
the previous books in software products. In this line, it includes very interesting frameworks for manufacturing systems and distributed systems, among others. It also
goes through concrete software scenarios, illustrating the benefits of combining domain knowledge and object-orientation expertise. Although the level of the articles
is rather odd, the volume certainly provides the readers a realistic picture of the problems of building and adapting frameworks by learning from others' experience.
A CD-Rom is also included with this book.

Overall, these framework books collect the state-of-the-art on framework development, offering a comprehensive and
easy-to-understand guide for both academics and practitioners in the field. It is clear that framework technologies will not solve all the problems (perhaps they rise
more challenges than current approaches), however, taking advantage of the framework possibilities can make your development process more repeatable,
productive, and also less painful. The gains of this retrain are no doubt a good investment.

A great reference and compilation of timely material. For anyone interested in frameworks targeted to specific application domains, this book surveys a broad spectrum of example systems while providing detailed in depth information concerning the particular requirements and features necessary for each domain.

This book in conjunction with the books "Building Applicaton Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design" and "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work" are a series of three books that constitute a complete and necessary guide for the design and implementation of application frameworks. They are based on multiple academic and industrial contributors experience building a wide range of domain-specific application framework. These books are very easy to read and understand and you can learn from them not only what a framework and an application framework are, but also how to apply this technology to real world domains, like manufacturing, health care, distributed computing, real-time systems, simulation environments, ...

First book, "Building Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design" introduces application frameworks, their benefits and problems. It addresses all the fundamental concepts behind OO application frameworks and provides guidelines for OO application framework development. It is organized in eight parts. Part one provides a complete overview of OO application framework technology describing what is an application framework, what are the problems and benefits of application frameworks and how to use, develop and evaluate an application framework. Part Two presents some historical application frameworks and discusses some general guidelines to increase the reusability of application frameworks. Part Three describes how to build a framework analysing a concrete domain. The rest of the book provides all the necessary information to completely build an application framework. It presents all the concepts managed in framework development, which are the different development approaches, how to test the resulting frameworks, the problems derived from integration and a question sometimes forgotten but very important, the framework documentation.

This book, "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks: Frameworks Experience by Industry" is focused in the experience of industrial and academic contributors in the development of OO application framework in different domains. Each chapter covers step by step the complete development of an application framework in manufacturing, distributed systems, real-time systems, telecommunication, multimedia, chemistry and data visualization domains. It includes the motivation developers founded to choose application framework technology, the problems they had to solve and the final solutions they developed.

Third book, "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work", shows step by step how to implement application frameworks in different domains. It is organized in six parts covering examples about i) Business Frameworks with different examples in sales and administrative domains, ii) Artificial Intelligence, iii) Agent Application Frameworks, presenting interesting frameworks for speech recognition, neural networks and agents. iv) Specialized tool frameworks, v) Language Specific Frameworks, vi) System Application Frameworks, which present and analyse the application of OO frameworks in combination with other methodologies as component-oriented programming, language constructs or constraint programming and vi) Experiences in Application Frameworks. This last section is very useful because analyse the lessons learned using the application framework technology.

If you're looking for a guide on writing e-mails in a business setting, look no further. This book covers every aspect of writing e-mails and even some tips on how to organize your e-mail as well. The chapters take you through different topics regarding e-mail and at the end of each chapter are some activities that you can do to help build your awareness of your e-mail writing skills and how examining the messages you receive from others can help improve your awareness of writing skills. This book is perfectly designed for training courses, since each chapter could be completed in one training session. I recommend this if you are looking to write e-mails as professionally as you can.

Like it or not, we live in a world of electronic communication. E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide is a practical and helpful guide for those who aren't totally familiar or comfortable with the medium as well as for those who use it routinely, but perhaps not always effectively or appropriately. Most important, it urges people to take their e-mail communication as seriously as their other written communication - and tells them how.

This book is exactly what every e-mail should be (and so few are): clear, sensible and pointed. Compare the advice here to the emails you receive daily and you will agree that it is filled with uncommon good sense. You'll find yourself trying to figure out how to secretly get copies to your colleagues! Jim Knutsen, President, Boatz Knutsen Communications

Like it or not, all of us are up to our eyeballs in emails everyday. We feel pressed for time yet need to write coherent emails that effectively communicate important information. This guide is an excellent resource on how to write readable emails that come to the point quickly without leaving any of the important stuff out. After going through the material, I recognized a lot of mistakes that our company frequently commits in our frequent volleys of emails with clients. I wish I would have had this book sooner! Thanks for cutting through the jungle for us, Write it Well!
Thanks,
Mike O'Quin
PowerPointPartners.Com

As the author of an English reference guide/workbook, I think this book is exceptionally helpful to everyone needing to send out professional e-mails. E-mail has just about replaced informal memos and even reports. Therefore, we all need to learn how to convey the right tone, present a professional image, get our messages across clearly, learn the etiquette of e-mail, and avoid the pitfalls and hazards that e-mail technology poses. The author provides excellent, relevant examples and lays the material out in a logical, easy-to-understand fashion. I highly recommend it to individuals, HR departments, and training professionals.
Jane Straus
Author of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
and
Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life