CAD and CAM Books

Let me start with the fact that I have never seen a single "factor" show, neither did I ever hear O'Reilly on the radio. I have HEARD about him, of course, but never read any of his material before.

That said, How did I end up reading the book? I was bored, and found it, so I read it.

He starts off OK in the introduction describing the kind of people who would read this book. I thought I fit the description, more or less so I kept reading.

He goes on to explain why politicians, journalists, activists, lawyers - even the Pope etc. are not looking out for you. Some of it was OK, I agreed politically with a couple of things, but it was not well written and there was too much about himself.

as for balanced, I think it was pretty fair, he told both sides of the story most of the time.

Its a good read when you are bored.

A simple, unbiased book. It's so simple the intellectual counterfeits of the left should even enjoy it. I wonder how many of the 200+ one star "reviewers" actually read it, though.

Let's be clear. Bill OReilly IS a centrist---perhaps slightly right of center. He is not Sean Hannity, Rush or Ann Coulter for better or worse. He castigates Bush, the religious right and federal spending often. He does, however, reserve his most bitter condemnation for the lowest forms of American life: the far, hate-filled left.

If you like the pedophile and terrorism supporters of the ACLU, you won't like this book. If you watch Bill's show, the only time he becomes enraged is when people denounce our heroic troops, praise the enemy of support those who murder children or protect those murderers.

This short book is to the point, eye-opening and worthwhile. I wish others could take off their dogmatic blinders and realize this.

When Bill is on tv my mom lets me watch and I have good grades in school.Bill O'Reilly is very smart
Kids look up to Bill cause he's smart and educated and he is real funny sometimes.
Bill O'Reilly laughs at the nasty letters he gets and I like that about him to.
Reading this book was not easy but my mom helps me through it and I love Bill just like I love my mom.

I bought this for my Mom....
She loves O'Reilly...
She LOVES this book!!

Television commentator Bill O'Reilly advises people to become problem solvers by developing "the ability to recognize who really cares about you as a person - and who does not." This is great advice that many never follow. He contends in this book that the government, media, church hierarchy, and big business are not looking out for ordinary Americans and hence are failing them. Along with some personal stories, this book gives good advice. This book does contain some strong language.

Before this book came out, I was begining to believe that Clive Barker was past his prime. I enjoyed the Books of Blood through Sacrament, and then I waited a long time for Galilee, wich was good, but not quite as good as the rest of his work. Thankfully, Coldheart Canyon blew me away.

There was good reason to believe that this tale of hedonism in the early age of Hollywood was going to be another soap-opera like the previous book. It was nerver wrecking to think that maybe he was just going to re-hash some of his ideas of fetishism with a bit of hollywood gossip tabloid drivel.

I was not expecting such a powerful and surreal experience. There are scenes here that are so suspenseful the hairs on the back of my neck were raising. The monsters, ghosts, and wonders here rival anything that he has written before. The parts of the story that deal with "the hunt" are downright nasty. Meanwhile, the celebration of the hollywood ghosts are so surreal and beatiful in their dark way. Never before have I met such a seductive and evil bad-girl as Katya, she could teach the sisters from Weaveworld about cruelty.

This is a long book, but it rewards heavily. There is no one in any genre who writes storys as complex and imaganative as Clive Barker. These images and characters will be in your head for a while. As this stroy builds to it's climax, it will have you gripping the pages so hard the circulation will be cut off from your fingers. When the revelations hit, as all the plotlines converge and things click, your mind will be blown.

A powerful performance that is somehow very underrated. I reccomend it to all fiction readers that have an open mind. Those looking for another Stephen King knock-off might want to pass.

Not a masterpiece, not incredibly awful---just a mildy entertaining piece of fluff. It occurred to me early on that this book is nothing but a beach read. There's nothing here to challenge your mind. Good book for a long train ride or the ICU waiting room.

i just finished clive barker's coldheart canyon and i wasnt disappointed. i must agree with other readers and say that it was about 100 or more pages too long (unimportant or nonrelevent information), but all in all i wasnt ready for the story to be over when i finished it. it took me about 3 days to read it; when i would start again i didnt want to put it down. it does have a lot of sexually explicit language and scenes throughout the story so if youre weary of those types of reads then i would pick something else (i like those types of reads myself so i thoroughly enjoyed it). i also didnt find it at all scary, frightening or suspenseful either, but like i said i liked the story and in a couple-few years i'll probably pick it up and read it again for old times sake.

This is the first Clive Barker novel I read. I hated it. It reads like it's a pure Hollywood story. Also, the events in the story are so nonsensical, I couldn't help but continuously think, "This is stupid."

I love horror novels, but this isn't much of a horror novel. I'll never read another Clive Barker book.

Added on 2007/03/24: I forgot to mention. This book is huge. 686 pages. At around 3 different points in the book, I thought, "Ok now it should end." Yet it kept dragging on. Bleah.

I can't recommend this book for anyone. I guess diehard Barker fans would like it.

This is the first Barker book I've ever read. I understand that some people think its far too sexually graphic at times, but I don't think that those scenes really distract too much from the larger story. The first few chapters are slow... dead dog, face lift, etc. But once Todd gets to Coldheart Canyon, the story really starts moving. I read in two days at work. I found it engaging and I was almost sad to finish it. Its a good book, and it even rekicked my love of silent films.

I'm giving Barker another go, with 'The Inhuman Condition' this time.

This was the first Lisa Scottoline book I've ever read. I've since gone on to read a few other, earlier ones, and now I have to wonder what the heck happened between those and this one?! Her earlier books are really good, and I'm not even a big mystery fan. This was a departure from her usual talent in so many ways. There were several problems with this book, many of which have been thoroughly discussed here, so I'll focus on the one that bothered me the most: the constant, almost every-other-page mentioning of brand names.

I felt like I was reading commercials interspersed with the story. Anne Murphy doesn't just wear shoes, she wears Manolo Blahniks. She's in debt up to her eyeballs, but she's just gotta have those $500-a-pair shoes. And Oakley sunglasses. And a Mustang. And Deer Park water. Yes, even the water she drinks is mentioned by name. And...the list goes on. I got the sense that the author was maybe trying to get free stuff from those manufacturers. Hey look! I mentioned you in my book! Can I have a pair of shoes? I also got the sense that Ms. Scottoline was trying to make Anne Murphy out to be the legal version of Carrie from Sex and the City. She's just as annoying. Oh, I can't pay my rent, but I'll spend hundreds, no, thousands of dollars on shoes and then ask my friends to bail me out! Women spent a lot of years trying to bury those stereotypes only to have them thrown in our faces by writers this way. But I digress.

The story was ok, the characters ok, although Bennie's "mothering" went overboard at times. I'll be honest, I didn't see the plot twist coming and never suspected the real killer, not once, so kudos there. However, I also might have been very distracted and annoyed by that point with all the advertising.

If you're a Scottoline fan, I guess you'll need to read this one to know Anne in subsequent novels. If you haven't read her before, start with the older ones. She truly is a gifted writer with an awesome sense of humor that has me literally laugh out loud at times. This book must have been written during an off-year for her. Don't give up on her completely.

Though I found it hard to believe the heroine would deliberately put herself in so much danger to catch a killer, I loved the characters. The book moved along at a fast pace and reached a point where I couldn't put it down.

MENTAL NOTE: SOME LAWYERS MAKE LOUSY WRITERS:
Publishers Weekly said Scottoline's writing might be cloying to readers. You think? This is understatement. I am stunned that this writer won an Edgar. One assumes a writer wins the award for their WRITING ... but if the writing in this book is any indication, this particular "author" can't have won it for that reason. For what? NO clue. It is amateurish to the nth degree. The story is predictable, silly, and about as exciting as eating Pablum. I always defend mysteries to those who say, "Oh I don't read mysteries." There are so many really good writers out there doing real mysteries - well written, well plotted, strong character development etc. But in this case there is nothing to defend. It is everything I dislike in "formula" mystery. No real character development. Trite yet lacking in real humor. Gimmicky. Full of old old cliches. Full of fluff and no substance. Full of boring.

This book was simply OK -- entertaining if you didn't give it too much thought as you sailed through it. For example, nearly the ENTIRE STORY takes place over 4th of July weekend in Philly. After each wacky or scary incident, after each plot twist, I'd say to myself, "And amazingly, it's still not Tuesday yet!"

The story itself is derivative (anyone ever see the movie Laura?) but the path Scottoline takes to get us to the resolution was enjoyable enough. The characters were fun, if sometimes a little too cute. In short, it was like a candy bar from the vending machine -- fun while it lasted, but nothing you'll remember after you're done.

I wouldn't say this is a terrible book, but I certainly wouldn't say it's the best of its genre either. This is the first book I've read by this author and a couple of times I went back to make sure it wasn't her first book. It had all the signs of a writer's first novel . . . stereotypical characters; a plot that if not lame was at least hobbling; needless repetition; and sometimes clunky writing. A few times the book was downright irritating ("Yes, yes, yes, we know the main character is a drop-dead gorgeous redhead that every man is immediately smitten with").

The book had an interesting premise to begin with; the writer just didn't quite make it all work. I think I'm being generous giving it three stars. As I understand it from some of the other reviews, the author's other works are better than this one. Maybe one day I'll try one of her other books. I'm in no hurry though.

I purchassed Gai-Jin years ago in the 90's but just got around to reading it. I finished it 07102008. First, it has been years since I read Clavell. When I first read Sho-Gun - back in 1977 - I didn't have the questions I have now concerning the Japanese. The two questions I have now are did they really think this way concerning politics and sex?

I recommend this book as I do all of James Clavell's works. I think that people should read these in chronological order though, not in the order they were published. Though I recommend the book, I only gave it 4 stars because with 1,000 plus pages, after awhile, the intrigue, double-plots, spies plans and counter-plans become somewhat tiresome.

I love history and was really impressed by Clavell in Shogun and Tai-Pan, though I never understood the need for renaming the true historical characters such as Tokugawa vs. Toranaga, etc...

In any case - this book is horrendously slow. The last half is just being plain awful. It fills like Clavell was being paid per word and had to come up with as many of them as he could describing totally ordinary events that hardly deserve mentioning, while leaving aside so much that could be very interesting.

Definitely NOT RECOMMENDED, especially if you value your time.

I was torn between four and five stars on this novel but finally settled on a full score because it managed to keep me completely riveted from beginning to end - its pace simply frantic! I have to disagree with some of the other comments which describe the story as "unfinished". When you spin a web as complex and intricate as the storyline in this book, spanning only a few months time and involving a staggering cast of characters, it's simply impossible from a social and human standpoint to completely close all loose ends. We're talking about clashes between multiple European countries, battling for the supremacy of Asian territories, various foreign trading companies clawing at eachother to gain ownership over Japanese precious raw ressources such as coal, personal conflicts and schemes which are vast in scope, all this mingled with the brutality and elegance of feudal Japan, torn between the Shogunate, the Emperor's court and various factions, all pulling in different directions. Not to mention, dozens of parallel plots, treachery, blackmailings, assassination attempts, deadly courtesans, spies and lust-fueled relationships, all intermingling in a cauldron of destruction. Does the author satisfactorily complete most action threads? - yes, definitely. Does he provide a solution to the political puzzle he portrayed? - no, simply because the timeline is too small and not everything was meant to be solved in such a short period.

In my opinion this book is almost as good as Shogun, perhaps the absence of a main hero with whom we can identify and cheer for, makes it a bit harder to win our sympathy, however Gai-Jin introduces more subplots and a larger array of colorful characters than Shogun does, whose inner motivations, personalities, strengths and weaknesses are perfectly portrayed, almost making us feel we grew up with them, leaving us wanting more, so much more.
I can say without any doubt, that Clavell is one of the best storytellers of the past century. Even while being seriously ill (this being his last book before dying), he still managed to captivate us with his wit, and his masterful command of the English language. Highly recommended read!

I need more. What happened to Angelique and Gornt? How did Tess deal with the Gornt scheme? Quillan in Noble house is obviously a descendant of Gornt with the hate continuing - even though the Noble House was written first. There is a Marlowe in Noble house, a descendant of Capt Marlowe? Did Jamie marry that stupid Irish girl that followed him to Japan? And Hiraga, my favorite, what happened with him? Did he make it to England? All these carefully created characters and no ending for them? The book really had me involved but I was left looking for a sequel. Had it not been for the hanging, I would have given this a 4 star.

The theme of this book is classic Clavell - adventures in the early days of Asian and Western contact, with all the risk, bravado, danger, characters, politics, etc etc of the earlier "Asian Saga" books Shogun and Tai-Pan. (King Rat is also a part of that, but a shorter novel with a unique theme set in WW2).
Having read the book, its easy to see why Gai-Jin recieved reviews split down the middle - it is NOT the book Shogun and Tai-Pan are.
Part of it may be a more complicated (and less interesting) time period for the average adventure reader. Gai-Jin is complicated, with a lot of characters and themes from the outset vs the other two novels, and gets more so as the book progresses. The plot gets too convoluted for those that cannot read it in a reasonable time (meaning its hard to put down and pick back up over and over). Like the other two, it weakens in the second half only much more so...
I also noticed some modern phrases that creep into the spoken parts. I doubt they would have been used even in 1862. I have an uneasy feeling Clavell kept writing and writing beyond what this should have been, perhaps under pressure...or perhaps this was too much of a deliberate effort (marketing expectations) ???

I liked it OK, but it marked the end of my interest in this series.
Its not a "bad" book, but it was a let-down after Shogun and Tai-Pan.

As you (try to)read this book, you see an actual well told story...BUT with at least one Twenty-Five cent word on every page. I don't know the genius who could read this book, and not stop on one of these words and go "Huh????" If you haven't read this book, go to the book store first, thumb to ANY page and start reading. I swear 98% of the time you'll find a word you've never heard of before! Writers, this doesn't make you a better writer as your reader has to keep a dictionary next to them. Thumbs down, sorry.

I really enjoyed this book and will recommend it to my friends. I didn't see the ending coming. The minute I thought I had the plot down they twisted it. If you like this genre of 'spy action' books then I you will get your money's worth.

i enjoyed reading the BS,
as i do most ludlum books,
enjoyable, not great, but a good read, nonetheless.

Yes, another novel supposedly written by the supernaturally talented author from beyond the grave has hit the book shelves...and yet while several post-death Ludlum novels have actually been really good (The Jansen Directive & Sigma Protocol just 2 examples) this one has failed to pull off the so-called attempt to resurrect the patented writing style that the late Ludlum perfected 30+ years ago...and yet I gave the book 3 stars. You might wonder why. So here is my reasoning: for those who pop this book expecting the intricate plotting that we have come to know and love from Robert Ludlum, you will be sorely disappointed. It borders on insulting to issue this as written by this well-respected and talented author. And yet if you begin this novel KNOWING it wasn't written BY Robert Ludlum, I believe you can appreciate it for being what I like to refer to as *Ludlum Light*.

The actual story isn't terrible and while it makes a bold attempt to mimic the style and prose of our late beloved spy author, it just doesn't have that extra *something* we always could expect from him. I am having a difficult time exactly putting my finger on it, but suffice it to say that while this is an OKAY thriller, it would easily be considered the worst of all Ludlum novels had it actually been written by him. Based on what we have received in the past and what he has managed to deliver over the subsequent 30 years, I can safely say that releasing fluff like this in the guise of the great Ludlum is also an insult to his fans, and in no way helps advance the sales of his truly superior Cold War era spy thrillers the way they ought to.

If you have read this fully KNOWING it isn't written by Robert Ludlum and STILL enjoyed it, and yet haven't discovered his novels, man are you in for a MAJOR literary treat. Pick up all his early stuff and be prepared for weeks of absolute thrills. I recommend The Parsifal Mosaic, The Materese Circle, the entire Bourne Trilogy (especially the Bourne Supremacy), The Holcroft Covenant, The Chancellor Manuscript and the Acquitaine Progression just to name a few. In my opinion Ludlum remains the greatest Spy novelist of the Cold War era, and while some of the novels are a bit dated, for those of us who can recall the USSR and its communist regime as the Evil Empire as proclaimed by Reagan, discovering Ludlum is more than a welcome find.

The best thing I can say about the Bancroft Stretegy is this: it's okay and I'd say it probably doesn't suck...but doesn't even come close to the late authors worst book.

Terrible, terrible, terrible. Thats all I can say for this dry dead story. I have read or listened to pretty much all of Ludlum's stories, and I have to say that I have acquired an ear to his particular style. This 'style' is almost void from these pages and it leads me to believe that most of the meat here is from another's hands. Also I am not the greatest fan of Ludlum. He basically has written a couple of stories that I would recommend, but for the most part he relies heavily on formula. The Bancroft Strategy is totally a Ludlum formula, so perhaps the ghost writer had a few dozen pages to work with, but beyond that the story is in some hacks hands. A hack who really did not have much riding on the literary merits of this story and thus has given us a sad shell.

This book basically wrests on the Ludlum cold war style that he wrestled with in the 1970's. Russia is gone, and now we have terrorists instead. Nothing is really put at risk here and as a reader this book is totally forgettable. You will have a hard time remembering the plot even days after finishing it.

While the book is well organised and number of topics covered is substantial, this was the worst intro-to-anything book I had to suffer through. If calculus is something you are very comfortable with, then go ahead, read it. :-)

In general avoid this book.
I purchased this book for a course, and unfortunately this is my first book. Its 95% maths, of course AI is a lot of math, but the book is so abstract and nothing related to practical stuff. Take convolution filters, it gives integrals and all that stuff, but what exactly does it do, how does it perform it on images, and where the heck are sample images, and sample matricies.
I bet this author must have sent this book out to teachers so that 50 students would have to buy this over priced book with no practicle use and so hard to read/understand and extremely dense.

A nice book. Especially the order in which the topics are covered is a good idea. However, you will not find the following errors reported in the book's webpage:

Page 52: The "high-degree function" is not a function!

Page 92: In Figure 6.6, the topmost pixels that get deleted as a result of the averaging operation should actually remain there, since both their sums are 4, which is greater than the threshold, which is 3.

Page 100: In Fig. 6.13, the last row of the last image contains a spurious image boundary.

Page 151: In Fig. 9.8, there are two nodes with name n; the one which is higher in the figure should have the subscript 1.

Page 152, item 3 in the list: There is an implicit assumption that h-hat always returns 0 for goal states. I don't think that this assumption is stated earlier in the text.

Page 165: In Figure 10.1, all arrows are supposed to be pointing away from the current state.

Page 246: The last paragraph mentions ".. the two interpretations for Clear and On suggested by Fig. 15.2", but aren't actually THREE interpretations suggested for On?

And in the current errata list in the book's website, something is clearly wrong with item 6, since it says n_i should be replaced by n_i.

All in all, a good book.

After having borrowed and read part of Nilsson's previous book "Principles of Artificial Intelligence" at the library some years back I was quite positive about the prospect of reading this one. However, it falls short on many of my expectations and can therefore not be recommended for neither the beginner nor the expert.

The book covers all the major areas of artificial intelligence but does so in a very superficial manner. There isn't actually enough information in the book at allow to to implement some of the techniques available - it is mostly teasers. Also many of the subjects are - and even some of the subjects that I already knew about beforehand - incomprehendable and I often got more confused about a subject than before I began reading it.

I very rarely give a book one star, but this one deserves it in the light of the many better books on AI. I recommend that you read "Russell and Norvig: Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach" instead.

Jacob Marner, M.Sc.

The field of artificial intelligence has an interesting history, both in terms of its content and the philosophical debate it has provoked. The field could also be loosely described as divided into two camps, those who view it as a collection of highly sophisticated algorithms, and those who view it as an attempt to create machines that exhibit human-level intelligence. Ironically, in the latter camp, it is difficult to assess the progress that has been made, since criteria for measuring machine intelligence are never explicitly given. Instead, dependence has been made on the "Turing test" for intelligence, a test that is difficult to apply, and in fact can be said to be too vague for a practical, objective assessment of machine intelligence.

This book is written more in the context of the latter camp, than in the former. However, in-depth discussion of the Turing test is not given, and this actually is one of the main virtues of the book, although the author clearly believes that the purpose of doing research in artificial intelligence is to achieve human-level intelligence. As he remarks in the last paragraph in the book, it was written to overview the techniques that he believes are required to achieve human-level intelligence. Although he does not explicitly give the reader tests for machine intelligence that will allow progress to be measured, he devotes a small portion of the book to various ideas on just what constitutes intelligence.

The book also gives a general (and sometimes very brief) overview of the algorithms used in artificial intelligence. Search heuristics, neural networks, and genetic programming are some of the topics that are covered. The influence of the "intelligent agent" paradigm, that is now taking the AI community by storm, is very apparent throughout the book. The author though does not neglect some of the topics in "good-ole-fashioned" artificial intelligence that arose decades ago and is still applicable today, especially in the field of logic programming. These topics include resolution in both the propositional and predicate calculus, and in expert systems. By far the best discussion in the book is on knowledge-based systems and evolving knowledge bases. This topic has taken on considerable importance in recent years due to the importance of data mining and business intelligence.

Readers who are considering artificial intelligence as a career choice will find good motivation by reading this book. The field also is quite different than most others in that it respects a high degree of individual creativity and ingenuity, and has a high bandwidth for new ideas. Beginning with its origins in the 1950s, the field has grown by leaps and bounds, but its applications have exploded in the last five years, fueled mainly by business and financial applications. Concerned not only with achieving human-level capabilities, but also with other forms of intelligence and how they can be useful, artificial intelligence has become one of the predominant forces in the twenty-first century. One can only be excited and optimistic about its further advances.

This is a book my mother-in-law left for me to read when she was here at the end of October. I had never read anything by this author before. The book was much better than I had expected! There are lots of characters to keep track of so you do have to concentrate when you read it. I enjoyed the twists and turns. It's also not the typical medical mystery book I am so fond of so that was a nice change too. I will seek out other books by this author in the future.

I was pretty disappointed with this effort by Stephen Frey. After awhile mentioning billions as if it has any meaning to the average reader, makes my eyes glaze over. The supposed good guy, Christian, is set up and fooled on a regular basis. If he is this gullible how did he become such a financial wizard? Too many unexplained happenings. He swims in icy Maine waters and his shoes don't squish? Is he wearing shoes? Don't his clothes drip all over the place. No, no and no. The author fills up a lot of pages and has a secret club a power club that has been written about many times before. It is an old plot idea and one can only hope this type of organization does not actually exist. If it does, expect your brain to be pulled out through your nose; the fate of one hapless character. Don't waste your time. I suffered so that you would not!

Somehow between "The Chairman" and this book, Christian Gillette morphed from a cutthroat chairman looking to protect himself from other nefarious characters and cutthroats, a truly fascinating enigma - into a hero-for-everyman type of character. The book still kept me interested, but the series' high note was the 1st book, and the overall quality of the story has descended steadily since. Hopefully, "The Successor" will reverse that trend.

Deceit, trust and honesty are themes that are repeatedly surfacing in Frey's novel "The Power Broker." All relationships are questioned and tested in this action and crime packed story.

The novel encompasses several original story lines that did not seem to mesh together until the second half of the book. The two powerful, secret orders one of white and the other of black men entailed a large amount of detail on both sides that left the reader confused as to which characters belonged to which orders. Each of the orders had separate goals for a presidential hopeful.

I had great difficulty keeping track of the dozen or more characters in this novel, even though many were killed off during the course of the novel.

I did quickly become attached to the true main characters of the book Christian, Quentin, Nigel and Allison. I found that my favorite part of the novel was the dialogue between these individuals. The story that was told with these characters through their business practices was easy to follow and believable.

In all honesty, I had to force myself to read past the first few complicated and intricate chapters. There were too many characters and settings introduced in the first few chapters. I especially found myself very perplexed as to how the prologue fit in with the beginning of the novel. As the story progressed, the amount of story lines seemed to increase and did not converge until the final few chapters.

This novel could have used a character chart or map to prevent the reader being lost with too many characters and settings.

For some reason I keep picking up Frey books with the expectation that they will be knock down thrillers filled with intrigue. You will find a little of that here, but the Power Broker is so filled with compositional flaws that anything approaching readability is quickly overwhelmed by Frey's need to jump around from one character to the next. I lost count of how many first person chapters Frey pushes in here that orient themselves around someone new. Also, for the first half of the book Frey is constantly adding new major... very major plot threads that are as cumbersome as car wrecks.

This could have been a pretty good book I think if Frey had approached it through the eyes of a single character such as the predominant protagonist, Christian Gillette. I am always game for a political thriller and it seems that Frey has managed to pit several sides against each other in a unique bid for power. Sadly, Frey is a pretty good writer of prose, has interesting ideas, basically, he has everything you need for a darn good genre writer... everything that is except a will to force his thoughts into a tract that would allow for another to follow along.

When I started to read the book, at first I was overwhelmed by all the information. I found that it was hard getting through some explanations especially when finding that there are many typos in this book. The books that I read before on advanced usage of ConceptDraw were clearer but much easier concerning the programming part. This book is 100% for advanced Visio users.

I have read both of the books (and others) and I find that Graham Wideman's book Visio 2003 Developer's Survival Pack is far better than Edson's. Wideman also has the same book for Visio 2000 and 2002. Wideman's book has far fewer errors (and his corrections are online), and far more useful samples/examples. Just a lot more meat, frankly. Amazon may not have Wideman's latest book - google it or go to diagramantics.com. It's worth the cost for real visio developers.

This book is a very good book for advanced VBA development with Visio. This book is not for the faint at heart. If you are looking to do serious development using Visio then this is one of the books that you need.

I admit that there are some typos in this book, but this doesn't detract from the value and advanced concepts that this book teaches. You are not going to be able to find very many books that have this depth. You need to be a senior level developer to appreciate the content of this book.

I recommend this book for serious VBA Visio Automation.

Having now read most of this book, I can say that I learned far more than I got from the Microsoft PDF files that shipped with Visio Pro--but I can't say I enjoyed it. If a writer with an ego bothers you, find a different author. If errors bother you, find a different publisher. As if to make a page quota, whole paragraphs are repeated, changing only a letter: "PosX is the X coordinate...{6-line paragraph)" followed by "PosY is the Y coordinate...(SAME 6-line paragraph)". This cut and paste goes on for pages in places. Examples and exercises almost never yield a useful product, though they are carefully explained. David knows a lot of history of the tool, which would have been pretty interesting except for the thread of vanity that sewed the stories together.

David Edson expects the user to be fluent with the elementary Visio features and VBA. The book builds upon this premise and imparts a comprehensive and incremental teaching of Visio. While the examples and illustrations are chosen well, the accompanying CD was missing a few examples, and came up blank. Overall, I strongly recommend this book to help for automation using Visio.

Yes, I got an impression that from the middle of the book the story was finished by someone else and this was not VH book... The beginning was very promising and very pleasantly told but then the book changed its stile. The book is ok to read but it is definitely not the best and not as gripping as others. I would not consider this a typical VH book.

My husband ordered this book for me for Christmas- I didn't get to begin the story until two months later. When I started to read it, I noticed that the book had the correct cover, but the inside contained a completely different story, "Berlin Game." However, it is too late to return the book! Please make sure the story you choose to purchase matches the cover of the book you order.

You won't take anything of this book but you will have a good time reading it and that is the greatest part of reading a book, the story of Carmel is nice and will keep you reading while she is in England and Australia, when she return to England and discover the assassination the story gets a little boring but still is a good reading, you won't know the time of the book until the last page, I think that that was a good idea.
By the way, which girl wouldn't want to have three options of marriage in less than two weeks?

As a child, I grew up reading Victoria Holt's books and when my future father-in-law gave me this book to read, I couldn't wait to finish reading my other books so I could read this one. And I have to confess, I was not disappointed by this book at all. It has enough mystery in it to keep me guessing and just a little romance to make me wish I was like the heroine and no gory details about any murder or anything. It is just a fascinating book to read especially while soaking in a hot bath.

Carmel March was found in the Marlines' garden at Commonwood House. And when tragedy struck the Commonwood House, Carmel was whisked away to Australia. It wasn't till when she came home to visit England again that she realized that the wrong man was hanged for the murder of the mistress of the Commonwood House. And she embarks on an eventful journey to discover the truth.

This is such an easy read and so delightful too. I snuck in my reading time in between unpacking boxes of books and I couldn't wait to read the next page ~~ so I would sneak off to read it! Holt does it again. I remember again why I was such a big fan of hers while growing up. And I would recommend her books to any mystery lover. She's one of the leading classic writers for the mystery world and you won't regret reading her books.

I had read "The Captive" some years ago and stumbled across this one again. This is a pretty good read. Its a slight mystery...who are the parents of Carmel, who was found under the azalea bush? Is she related to the gypsys camped in the woods?
And who really killed that mean invalid? You won't find out 'til the very end. Ms. Holt keeps you entertained along the way---Carmel has many an adventure and misfortune in her short life. She travels with her "Uncle" to Australia and lives there a while. Then shes back in England and involved in suitors, weddings and tragedy.
I noticed in the publication that Ms. Holt was born in 1906. That would mean this woman wrote this in her 80s. I am very impressed! The quality of the story and the reflection of life in it is well thought out and gives insight into whats important to be happy.

This was a secondary text for a solid modelling class that I recently took. I believe that I personally drew 90% of the excercises with little difficulty. I found it to be a straight forward guide to mastering the basic SolidWorks commands. Unlike some texts, the author doesn't always give you every single mouse-click necessary to draw every part. In fact, I found a step or two missing here and there. Personally, I believe that this just makes you think a little bit more.

The only real shortcoming of this text is that it doesn't really cover assemblies, mating up parts, and determining interferences.

The book does have a good index in the back, so it can serve as a decent reference to the various commands and features. It also has a trouble-shooting appendix that could prove useful.

If you combine this with Planchard's _SolidWorks 2001 Tutorial_ (which does a much better job on assemblies) then you've got everything you really need to develop a working proficiency with the program.

This is a wonderful book for beginners who haven't taken SolidWorks dealer training or can't afford same. It has lots of practical design examples from real life.

This book is worthless. First, they don't tell you that what release of Solidworks this book covers until you find out for yoruself when you crack open the cover. Guess what? It's for a version of Solidworks that's three years old and there isn't an update version of the book available! Secondly, the step by step lessons totally [are bad]. Very poorly written and illustrated.

Un-detailed, very overpriced. crude tutorials with insufficient explanations.

This book is a great introduction to feature-based modeling. It doesn't teach everything one needs to know about SolidWorks, but what it does teach, it does very well. I wish there were more books like this one that covered the advanced features of SolidWorks.