Languages Books

Ayn Rand is one of the foremost communicators of our time. Her ability to communicate complex issues cogently, logically and passionately means that, decades later, her works are still being sited as `the text' to read, in politics, philosophy or morality. Clarity, integration and style are thoroughly discussed. The advice given here applies to all non-fiction writing (see also her book on fiction writing The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers) and it's not the usual recycled blurb. Rand's method of thinking, led to her method of writing and style. This book lets you into some of those secrets and allows anybody to improve their writing skills.

I was rather impressed with what Rand had to say about writing and style. As the authoress of the second-most influential book ("Atlas Shrugged"), she has a lot to say on the matter. And, as always, you cannot stop a bandersnatch.

There are some preliminaries. First, as with all of her writings, this book's ideas are outgrowths of her philosophy of Objectivism. For Rand aficionados, you know that it keeps cropping up with everything that she writes. So if you either agree with her, or are willing to plow around it, then get this book.

Second, this book is really edited selections from a longer seminar she had on writing. If the discussion seems out of joint at times, it is due to the selecting/editing process. To help round out here ideas, I suggest reading "The Art of Writing Fiction" and "The Romanic Manifesto," all of which were extracted from this same meeting.

Rand is one of the finest systematic thinkers ever, and this book shows it. She is able to take something apart, separate, correlate, and analyze the parts, and then put it back together again.

By being so analytical, she gets the writing process right. The first five chapters are really the basting cap essential in explosive writing. Writing can be simplified by preparation, organization, and thinking, which is the message of these chapters.

Chapters 5 through 8 cover the more traditional nuts and bolts of writing. Chapter 5, on creating an outline, is the key link between thinking and writing. She is right when suggesting that everyone writing nonfiction should use an outline. It organizes both the mind and the writing. I was glad that the editors included some sample outlines of Rand's writing, to watch how the process proceeds from outline to full article.

I think out of all of the chapters, "Writing the Draft" was the most helpful. The editor subtitled it "The primacy of the subconscious." This highlights Rand's point that writing is really something that comes spontaneously form a disciplined mind. Furthermore, the chapter contains several subsections on "The Squirms," helpful mulling, euthanizing pet sentences, and handling interruptions.

This last point cannot be emphasized too much: writing is a job, and it takes concentration. Rand likens it to heating a blast furnace--you work up to a high temperature, and that temperature must be maintained for weeks to get the desired results. While writing "Atlas Shrugged," she had to sequester herself for thirteen years.

I have a similar experience while writing. People visibly see you clacking on the computer, but what they do not see is the amount of focus inside your head, invisible to your eyes. So they want you to answer the phone, run this errand, baby-sit, chat, paint a house, watch some idiotizing program on TV, or come in on your day off because so-and-so called in sick so they could stay home watching some idiotizing program on TV. You need to be as harsh with writing as you would with your bill-paying job. Indeed, a good writer sees writing AS A SECOND JOB!

The last chapters are a potpourri of topics that did not fit in either "The Romantic Manifesto" or "The Art of Fiction." They are helpful for what they are, but seem a bit out of place and curt. They serve as surveys to the topics.

The only critique I have would be rearranging the chapters. Move chapter 12 ("Acquiring Ideas For Writing") up between chapters 1 and 2, since the thinking process--the process of reverie and listening to the unconscious percolate--precedes the choice of a subject and theme. I would also move chapter 11 ("Selecting a title") to go after chapter 7 ("Editing"), and moved chapter 8 ("Style") between the chapters on writing the draft and editing. Since this book was edited posthumously, this organizational error is not hers.

Here is my ideal order:

1. Preliminary remarks
2. Acquiring Ideas for Writing
3. Choosing a Subject and Theme
4. Judging one's Audience
5. Applying Philosophy
6. Creating an Outline
7. Writing the Draft
8. Style
9. Editing
10. Selecting a Title
11. Book Reviews
12. Writing a Book
Appendix: Outlines

For a second or third reading, it may be helpful to use this order, since it follows the process of thinking-writing-rewriting.

*

I have put this book in my mix of style guides, and will read it along with Strunk and White, Trimble's "Writing With Style," The Chicago Manual, and "The Little, Brown Handbook."

(I would rate it five stars, but the disordered chapter organization talked me out of it.)

This book offers guidance on a variety of topics and problems that a writer of non-fiction, whether articles or books, might encounter. The advice is never formulaic, but rather gives the reader methods by which to improve his own writing process and style. Highly recommended.

It starts slow and plods along for a few chapters but eventually Rand strikes a resonant chord and the writing comes to life. Ayn Rand will get your mind 'right' about writing and get your mental tool-box organized, to handle odd-jobs or the magnum-opus.

As with so much of Ayn Rand's writing, she takes on an issue (in this case, nonfiction writing) that seems hopelessly complex, and then explains it with such clarity that you're left wondering what all the confusion was about in the first place. If you're stuck in your writing, even if you've never read anything by Rand before, this book is priceless.

Anyone who has studied languages, particularly difficult ones, knows that repetition, and lots of it, is the key to success. This book and its companions excel in this regard. Vocabulary is chosen carefully and is then used to build graded sentences through example, dialog and narrative which can run to over twenty pages in a single lesson. I wish that I'd had the equivalent when studying Korean and Japanese.
One piece of bad news, however, the text is in traditional characters. This means that at some point you are going to have to make the effort to learn the simplified characters that are used by the bulk of Chinese throughout the world now. However, if you've mastered the texts in this series, that shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

These texts are the seminal series in hanzi erudition. They are great for learning the language, and reading and writing its characters. This one is the second of the first two 'Beginning' texts. I just finished the first. It should be noted that this, the 2nd, is intended to be grouped with the first. The 2nd therefore has the index, dictionary, and other appendices in back. The first only has the first 33 chapters. If considering purchase or already in possession of the first, you might consider ordering this one also.
The book is structured into chapters each presenting 10 base character words, and about 40 compounds derived therefrom. After character and compound presentation, are short example sentances which have english translations. Then there are a few pages of dialogue text, untranslated. Finally are a few pages of narative prose, also untranslated. Then its on to the next chapter with another ten characters. Every sixth chapter is a summary of the last five with some excercises to distinguish similar constructs and prose to excercise reading.
Amazon got the book to me flawlessly of course. Pricewise it was unbeatable, although I bought the first one used for a fraction.

I'm not going to repeat what has already been said but DeFrancis states that this book and volume 2 combined contains 120,000 characters of running text using just 400-500 distinct characters!!! It is this repetition and various presentation of characters in different contexts that I find the most valuable. I am not sure where else you can find such a large number of what is essentially graded readings for beginners.

As many have mentioned before, this is bested used as a supplement to a grammar text.

This book is an excellent means of practicing reading Mandarin chinese in Traditional characters, but has little to no guidance on grammar, pronunciation, or traditional uses. While some self-study types like myself would be tempted to try using just one book at a time, I'd say this would best be used in conjunction with the other books in the series, or one of the software/tape systems for spoken and grammatical chinese.

In the 1960's, while Mr. DeFrancis was working on this series, he wrote an essay called "Why Johnny Can't Read Chinese" (Journal of the Chinese Language Teaching Institute, Volume 1) in which he explains why a book like this is necessary and why he designed it the way he did. The reviews below pretty much restate it - you cannot learn to read Chinese just by memorizing a lot of individual characters.

An example: ben3 means "root" or "self." Lai2 means "come." Di4 means "earth." Ren2 means "man." All simple words. But when combined, could you guess that benlai would mean "originally" or bendi would mean "this country" or benren would mean "myself, yourself, himself"? There are thousands and thousands of combinations of this sort that have to be learned separately from the individual characters or you will have no idea what you're reading.

In addition, I would like to get something off my chest. Everyone tells you Chinese grammar is easy. It isn't! It's just different! Chinese uses word order instead of declensions, tenses, etc., to convey different meanings. If you get the word order wrong, you're saying something completely different from what you wanted to say. People will tell you word order in Chinese is a lot like English, which is true in simple terms, but a very dangerous generalization. "Bu hen hao," for instance, means not very good, but "Hen bu hao" means really bad. "Min2guo2" means republic but "guo2min2" (same characters) means citizen. In any kind of complex sentence (or even in simple ones) you need to be very familiar with common, habitual word order rules. There are too many of them to simply learn by rote. And that's not even mentioning the problem with particles like the infamous "le." You need to read a LOT of Chinese words in context to really learn these grammar rules.

And the DeFrancis Chinese Reader Series has just that. These books are thick! Another reviewer below gave the number of characters in each volume, I think, and you can read above the dimensions of the book, so I won't repeat it here.

The Readers also teach you the cultural significance of a lot of terms, a lot of idiomatic expressions, and a lot of historical and place names. And also I'll make the suggestion that you use these books in combination with his grammar texts, "Beginning Chinese," etc. The audiotapes for the whole series, including the Readers, is available from Seton Hall Language Lab. I don't think you can find any series more thorough.

Some people will tell you these books are out of date because they were written in the late 1960's, but I haven't found that to be a problem at all. Grammar doesn't change much. A few words have changed, but really, you need to know the old words as well as the new. I mean, is anyone saying that English readers can't understand books written 50 years ago? The only form of language that changes that quickly is slang, and you're in trouble if you think that's language learning. Foreign language book publishers are the main culprits here - they want to come out with a new, more expensive edition of their audaciously expensive, well-nigh worthless texts every 5 years. But don't get me started.

The introduction in the beginning of the book makes a lot of good points, but I've used up all my space, so I'll put some quotes in a "Volume 2" review in case you're still wondering if this is the right series for you.

Oh - and do buy Volume 2 along with Volume 1 because, as reviewers have noted below, the index is at the back of Volume 2.

I have used this book and it has proven to be a highly resourceful Visual Basic and SQL Server book, that I am anxiously waiting for the release of Beginning VB.NET Databases by the same author!!!.

It's very good Books with good Price and (Wrox Press)

OK for beginners who want to know some of the innards of SQL server, but there are two major faults. One is that newbies to networkable machines will find themselves crushed under the weight of networking and communications jargon that the author never explains, and Win98 machines can't handle half of the book. Second, the last third of the book for some 200 pages has nothing to do with VB: the samples are written entirely in XML, DHTML, and a mere snippet of VBScript. There are better VB tools for creating Web apps that can handle big datasets and ActiveX, whereas XML has enfuriatingly slow performance and an unattractive and inflexible interface that looks like something pounded out on a typewriter (remember those?). 5 stars for the first two-thirds, zilch for the remainder.

I had to learn SQL programming with Visual Basic 6 in about a month's time for a project. This book taught me everything I needed to know to deliver the application. Everytime I came across a stumbling block in my code or in SQL Server 2000 I found the answer in this book.

This book will make you feel that you not only know how to make Visual Basic talk to SQL Server, it will make you feel you know more than the basics of SQL Server itself. Previous to reading this book I had no idea what a stored procedure was, or how a query works in SQL Server (I had worked extensively with Microsoft Access, and these skills were not necessarily transferable to SQL Server, though many of the concepts are similar). Now I know my way around SQL Server 2000. This book fulfilled a dual purpose.

There are chapters on Database design, SQL Server installation, SQL Server security, Querying, Stored Procedures, the SQL language, IIS, and XML. Most of the book is taken up with what developers do everyday: the storage and manipulation of data. Over 300 pages of the book is dedicated to data in general, and how to get the most out of it using VB and SQL Server.

If you need to create a VB6 (there is no discussion of VB.NET since the book predates it) database application using SQL Server, this is the book to start with. Its bulk pays off.

This is an excellent introduction to SQL Server 2000 for Visual Basic 6.0 developers. I used this book and Robert Vieira's Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming (Also by Wrox) to study for the Designing and Implementing Databases using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 exam (70-229). The 2 chapters on XML were especially good. Thearon does his best work when he works solo and this book is one of his best. I have his SQL Server 7 book and both books are well-written. I really like the "Hardware Tracking" tutorial that he follows for most of the book. This tutorial will also help with your Visual Basic skills. I have learned several new VB tricks just by following along. I hope that Thearon writes a Beginning SQL Server 2000 for Visual Basic.Net Developers.

I read this book a few years ago but still recall its images vividly. The interwoven stories, foreshadowing, and imagery are quite masterful and overall present a great narrative.

Es un libro un tanto complicado, pero muy interesante. Tiene todos los elementos para vivir un poco de risas, muchos escalofríos, un buen absurdo y mucho del ser humano. Una novela que leí hace varios años y que aún recuerdo como cuando la estaba leyendo. Muy pocos libros logran eso.

Poniéndome en plan exigente, me hubiera gustado un poco mas de claridad en el ritmo de la historia, pero aún con eso, es un libro que cualquier amante de la novela debe leer.

(va sin acentos)
Este libro me parecio interesante pero no lo suficientemente bueno para darle 5 estrellas. Tuve un problema con el "ritmo" de libro en especial al principio (digamos a "grosso modo" la primera mitad), ya que me parecio dificil de leer. El autor no parecia tener la fluidez suficiente para llevar la historia, rica en personajes altos en color. En la segunda mitad, cuando se desencadenan las acciones que guiaran al lector al final del libro, se nota una fluidez en la pluma que le da al libro un impulso definitivo. En suma, me parece un buen libro, un poco desigual para ser sincera, con un cierto abuso de adjetivos y una puntuacion un poco marcada que me irritaron en un cierto momento: los que lean el libro quizas comprenderan lo que digo. No merece un 3 en la clasificacion, mas no merece un 5. Puede ser que el prologo, en el que se habla de la admiracion del autor por Garcia Marquez y su amistad con el escritor colombiano hizo crecer una expectativa que no fue completamente satisfecha y esto es quizas, tambien, un error personal.

Compre este libro hace 4 años y acabo de leerlo, no se como pude esperar tanto. Si de mi dependiera no le daria un premio sino dos. El mejor libro que he leido en este año.

El manejo del absurdo en la novela es un arte bastante delicado pues se puede convertir en ridículo o tonto con solo pequeños errores. Estos están completamente ausentes en esta novela, en la cual la locura se explica a si misma a través de millones de pequeños sub cuentos que el autor logra enlazar una historia coherente, donde un cubano ex-veterano de la guerra de Angola en su desespero por escapar de un tigre alado imaginario ( o tal vez no) que lo persigue secuestra un grupo de muchachos que lo único que querían era un poco de sexo en su noche de graduación del colegio. Sin embargo esta trama es solo incidental para que el autor nos pueda presentar como en un mundo incoherente la "locura" es un medio tal válido para darle sentido como cualquier otro.

La novela es simplemente genial.

first edition half this size by same author for $6.50
'beyond the dictionary in spanish'

In an earlier commentary about this book, a reviewer wondered how a $7 paperback could be going for upwards of $140. Well, the answer is: scarcity. This is where you have to be careful. The book listed under the title "Cassell's Colloquial Spanish" is said to be the third revised edition, published in 1981. That edition is indeed quite rare, which accounts for its fetching big bucks. However, that's not the end of the story. A couple of other reviewers lamented that there isn't an updated version of this book. It turns out there is, but with a different subtitle.

Which leads me to my story. After seeing the book offered from one of the online sellers at a "bargain basement" (compared to all the others, that is) price, I ordered what I thought to be the 1981 edition. When the book arrived, though, I noticed some differences from the picture and publication info I'd seen at Amazon. So I went back and compared ISBN numbers. The book I'd ordered was not the 1981 edition; the ISBN number for that one is 0020794304. The ISBN number on the one I received is 030407943X. Confused, I typed in that number and was startled by the result. The title of the book with that ISBN number was listed as "Spanish Colloquial", and no author's name was listed anywhere (BTW, Amazon has corrected the title and added the author's name). What's more, the publisher was listed as Orion Publishing Company, not Cassell's. The particularly strange thing about that is the name Orion appears nowhere in the book I have, while the name Cassell's appears several times (I found out later that Orion owned the printing rights to the Cassell's line for several years, but no longer). In addition, the book's cataloging info indicates that the 1981 edition was reprinted three times: 1985, 1988 and 1993. The copy I have is the 1993 reprint, even though the concluding words of the introduction are "Abingdon, 1980, A. Bryson Gerrard." My guess is the 1993 reprint is far less rare than the 1981 third edition. To top it all off, several sellers were offering the 1993 printing at prices lower than what I paid.

So was I duped? It appears that way. But I'm not going to send the book back, because it does contain everything I was hoping to find in the first place. And I concur wholeheartedly with all of the other reviewers. Gerrard has done a tremendous service to English speakers who are passionate about learning Spanish. Some of the information in Gerrard's book is a bit dated, though, which obviously can't be blamed on him. Just try to recall the state of the Internet in 1980 and you'll understand. I don't know if Mr. Gerrard is dead now, but don't let the passage of two and a half decades dissuade you from enjoying his fine work. However, taking into account the need for a more contemporary reference, I would also recommend "Streetwise Spanish" -- both volumes, the dialogue book and the dictionary/thesaurus.

This book is a gem for the student of Spanish, providing the various colloquial meanings of a good many useful Spanish words. The author's various first-hand anecdotes about the situations in which he heard the words used in a particular way will amuse even the casual monolingual reader. Some of his warnings about linguistic etiquette might be a little out of date in the more modern, and Americanized, parts of the Spanish-speaking world, but it's always better to err on the side of propriety. Your command of colloquial Spanish will break down barriers that mere conversational proficiency cannot overcome , and this book has proven to be an excellent teacher for me.

As a speaker of fluent Spanish, this book was invaluable in getting subtle nuances, learning false cognates and distinguishing between meanings from one country to another. It's a fun read as well. I have about 5 copies for my own references and to give away given how valuable and well-written it is.
What I don't understand is how a $7 paperback is going for $40 to $140 on the Internet!

I'm an intermediate Spanish learner, and when I get sick of grinding memorization, etc, I pick up this book. It's enjoyable, and you really can read it straight through.

Here's a representative entry that shows how many examples the author gives from various countries --

carpeta: A Friend of unusual Falsity since not only does it not mean "carpet" but has very diverse meanings within the Hispanic world. In Spain and Mexico it means a "file," of the sort used in offices. In Peru it means a "desk" of the sort used in schools (elsewhere usually pupitre) and in Colombia it means a "table-cloth" (ornamental; not for meals). I have also heard it used for a "brief-case."

A carpet, as you know, is una alfombra. Wall-to-wall carpet is hecha a medida, "made to measure," but is often referred to as moqueta, "moquette" (carpet-material).

When I tried to find a replacement for my old editions of Oxford Concise and Cassell's (both printed and edited in the UK), I unwittingly bought a version of the americanized Oxford. Shocking! Full of pictures of sports stars & actors with some definitions interspersed. It's adequate for a high school student, but I'm glad I discovered Chambers. I adore it - just lots and lots of words. So, if you love English and don't have enough dough for the big OED, buy Chambers for a fraction of the cost.

Clearly printed, with loads of useful extraneous information. At last I have the definitive dictionary to allow me to finish my crosswords!

The Chambers Dictionary (10th Ed.) is truly an outstanding dictionary especially with the updated words added.I owned an older edition and was really glad to get this edition.I also bought the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary(11th Ed.) and I can safely that it cannot compare to the Chambers.

Having worked in the Printing & Publishing industry for 45 years, I can recommend Chambers. The old 'Proof Readers' of Fleet Street along with Newspaper Editors always kept the latest version close to hand.
BPW

By far the most comprehensive dictionary I have bought. Very pleased with it.

This book effectively takes the reader from start to finish regarding the publishing process. Avery Cardoza is truly gifted in his ability to convey information.

Though some of the data needs to be updated, the overall content is solid and time tested.

Pertinent, enjoyable read.

This book has helped me to understand publishing and what it takes to start a company. Nothing is sugar-coated, and I really appreciated that. You learn where to go to get legally registered and how much everything will cost. When I went about starting my publishing company, everything was as Cardoza said it would be; no surprises. The book was interesting enough to be read within a couple of days, and it even had some humorous points. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the publishing business, or writers who are curious about the way it works. He covers publishing all the way from a mere idea to the finished product, and then he gives helpful insight on marketing and distribution. There are also some templates (for contracts and other things), and lists of people to contact in order to get your company listed (for writers to find you). There are a few typos, but the information is so well put-together that they aren't even an issue. I have no further publishing questions (at least not until I drastically expand my business) after reading this book. I can't praise it enough!

Whether you're considering starting your own publishing company or you'd like to self-publish a book, this gives you absolutely all the information you could possibly need. From registering a company name and getting the ISBN to the actual layout and printing of the book, it's all there! I thought I'd have to buy several books to learn everything I'd need to do, but this ended up being the most comprehensive guide I could find. I ended up sending my book to a publisher instead of publishing it on my own, but my closest friend in the world used this book to start his business and he's been amazingly successful! Even if the edition is a few years old, it's suprisingly relevant and accurate. It's a great buy and I recommend it to anyone even thinking of self-publishing, starting a publishing business, or even just a career in publishing.

This is comprehensive, good info, has all the details: layout, marketing, legalities. If you want to publish buy this book and be on your way!

Avery Cardoza's book about publishing is a little more complete than many of the others out there.
It isn't written for authors who self-publish, but for entrepreneurs who want to start a book publishing company, though it's helpful to both.
His tone is upbeat and encouraging. He's a successful publisher himself, and he shows you how he did it. He has an excellent chapter on finding your niche in the book market and on evaluating the profit potential of each area of book publishing. He has great credibility in this area.
Then he launches into the nuts and bolts of setting up your company, the company structure you want, and the investments you need to make, and what you can expect financially as you start out.
There's an excellent section on finding authors and ideas for books and turning them into profitable works. He shows how a small publishing company can leverage its advantage over larger companies and make a profit on books that they can't.
He discusses marketing, including the impact of your title and cover design, and has a great section on how to price your books.
There are several chapters on production and interior design that can help you as you work with printers and designers, or if you'd like to try to do the interior design yourself.
He wraps up the book with some nuts and bolts advice on running your business and improving your bottom line.
He deals with distribution and sales, and getting publicity, though he doesn't delve into publicity a lot. He also doesn't really discuss editing at all. There are some copyediting mistakes in the book which may make you reflect on how important copyediting perfection is to your bottom line. How many mistakes can you let get through and still have a profitable book?
I'd recommend other books to learn more about marketing, publicity, and editing.
He also has an interesting chapter on multimedia and software publishing and the great differences between that and book publishing.
Overall, a very well-rounded book that has some clear strengths that make it extremely valuable for a publishing entrepreneur.

This book makes a complicated machine like computer very easy to understand

The best thing I love about this book is the writing style of Prof. Freedman and how easily and clearly it can crystallize, the otherwise complex computer terminology, components and concepts. The explanations used here are vivid. I have owned a copy since 1997 and I have never been disappointed with anything that I needed to look up, for instance 'kludge' is described here as - "Also spelled 'kluge' and pronounced 'klooj'. A crude, inelegant system, component or program. It may refer to a makeshift, temporary solution to a problem as well as to any product that is poorly designed or that becomes unwieldy over time."

It will be hard to obtain better explanations than they are written in here.

There are several other similar Encyclopedias around which I have never looked at, because I had no need to look for another Encyclopedia.

Unlike most other computer dictionaries/encyclopaedias in its class, the inclusion of a companion CD-ROM gave this "Computer Desktop Encyclopedia" a comfortable jump-start in the superiority contest.
The book (and its attached CD-ROM) covered, in the most definitive way, all the important terms and acronyms that apply to today's computer and networking technologies. Hardware, software, and allied peripherals were adequately represented.
It is descriptive and well-illustrated, and included all the commonly used file extensions. With over ten-thousand terms and definitions, its scope is rich: in comparison to what exist now.
This computer encyclopedia ranks among the best currently on sale. However, potential buyers may be frustrated (at the moment) by its limited availability.

And too bad it's out of print. While this book will not teach you how to use a PC, it will define every computer related (and often electronics) term you can imagine. I was surprised on some of the really obsecure terms this book contained that I didn't expect it to mention. I got this book used and after reading over some of it, I'd say this is a must have on any nerd's desk as the it compares up there with as good as an internet search for explanations of PC related terms.

I work people whose computer knowledge varies from very little to a serious computer user. This reference manual is one book that all levels can benefit from. This book is the perfect manual to answer the questions in an easy to understand format without all that technical jargon.

The book is over 1100 pages and is loaded with pictures and figures to give a visual representation of the definition which makes is easier to understand some of the concepts covered. There is computer definitions, vendor breakdowns, and certification analysis and application definitions.

Some of the topics covered are networking, computers, MACs and applications. Some of the technologies included are CISCO, CompTIA, ATM, FDDI, Ethernet and token ring. Also included is a cd-rom which has over 5000 more definitions not included in the book. Overall a great addition to my technical library.

While taking java courses at the local college, I ventured into the idea of applying what I had learned. Being an avid Mindstorms fan, I found this to be the perfect outlet. This book has re-affirmed what I have learned as well as created new ways to look at the programming. Due my success with this product, my professors have asked that I periodically come by with a program for student review and demonstration of applied programming.

It is well written with unassuming overtones. The portions on building your own sensors also make electronic assembly easier. The graphics are black and white on flimsy paper giving the book a sense of newspaper style instructional manuals. This said, presentation could be better.

All in all this is a very good tool for the Mindstorms nut, Java programmer, and techy at heart. I highly recommend added it to your tool box!

Contents includes:

interfacing a robot to a PC
electronics schematics : light, touch. motion sensors, distance, compass sensors

Robot magazine cost $5.99 and includes non JAVA educational robots

This book is superior to "Programming Lego Mindstorms with Java."

It is well suited to both beginning and advanced programers. It covers languages basics, but still provides much info to experienced Java developers about robotics Design Patterns.

It also includes detailed instructions and pictures describing on basic robotic construction...things like how to turn a rotary motion to a linear motion, how to change gear ratios, how to build differentials, etc.

There is also a detail chapter devoted to building your own homebrew sensors that even someone with little to no experience in electronics could easily build.

I am very happy with this purchase.

If you have the Lego RIS and are interested in Java then this is the book to get. Bagnall leads you through the installation of LEJOS and JCreator (both freeware) including setting up the environment variables on your PC. He also gives a brief introduction to Java, enough to get you started. The chapters on behavior, proximity detection and navigation are especially good. As an added bonus, applying the techniques discussed in this book is a fun way of learning the basic concepts of Java and object oriented programming. It won't make you an expert, but it will get you started.

I just bought a mind storm kit and have had great fun during these thanks giving holidays. I explored the lejos api and have read this book. I am keenly interested in running the robot over the network, with the IR tower. And this book has just all the code and examples to help me work on that. I am using this book and the basic rover bot to test out some java code on it. I have tried a few lejos examples. This is a great book. Its just amazing thatjava can be run on 32K of memory!

--Naveed

I will be brief.
I only have 4.5 years experience as a programmer, of those only 1.5 were spent on C++ and I have no experience whatsoever in game programming;
the new stuff I learned from this book could be printed on a letter page or less.

This is just generic, and rather primitive, data structures and algorithms book, that applies them to making a small game instead of usual example search/whatever programs. Sometimes it feels like a data structure was used merely as an example that fit in that place in grand example-place matching, and not as the most useful or efficient one...

One could probably turn it into "Data Structures for Database Server Programmers", "Data Structures For Embedded Device Programmers", or "Data Structures For Solving World Hunger" with copy/paste and minor grammatic corrections ;)

This book actually teaches Data Structures!! Data Structures are the essence of programming. Ron manages to present all the basic Data Structures and the most famous algorithms in a clean and gentle way.

Many many thanks to Ron Penton for his help! Ron Penton really knows how to write a book! His way of writing shows that he knows the subject perfectly and presents it in a way that anyone understands what he is talking about. No matter how hard the topic is! By the way, Ron Penton has a great sense of humour!

If I could I would give one more star for the GREAT job he did with the CD. Although I intended initially to learn Data Structures, I also learned SDL. Perfect combination for someone who wants to start writing games!

A pre-requisite for any book on Data Stuctures is that the person should be comfortable with the syntax and semantics of programming in a high level language such as C++ or Java. Hence this book assumes that you are comfortable with C++ and OOP. There is no such thing as Data Structures for Absolute Beginners. So discard the review with 2 stars. Overall this is an excellent and interesting book on Data Structures.

Bottom line is this, you can find the information presented in DS4GP in any other good book on data structures but what sets this book apart is the presentation, organization, practical content and the writing style of the author.

It's definetly not for beginners or for a person looking for a very detailed book on data structures that covers AVL trees and red-black trees. But for the other 99% its a must buy.

i wanted a book to brush up on some data structures since i've been out of programming for a few months. plus, most of my learning of these has been self taught and from the internet where there is limited (good) writings on more complex subjects such as programming. so i wanted to have a fresh perspective. not only does the book contain very useful details in many areas and to the point information (gets to the first data structure by page 14!) but the author somehow makes this stuff fun to read.
the author doesn't go hugely in to depth in some areas but that's pretty much what i wanted since i am already familiar with how to use most of the stuff. very good book and i'd highly recommend it. hope this author continues with more books!

Ron Penton, Data Structures for Game Programmers (Premier, 2003)

I don't normally get all googly-moogly over programming books. In fact, I just took a quick look back at my reading log since 1999, and a select few have gotten four stars, but nothing above that. But I picked up Penton's nine-hundred-page tome on Thursday and I finished it on Sunday. Nine hundred pages in four days. I've only been keeping track of page counts over the past year, but the books I've read that have come closest, page-wise, have been Robin Hobb's lovely novels, three of which I read earlier this year hovered around eight hundred pages. I read the shortest of them in eight days. And I love Robin Hobb.

Data Structures for Game Programmers is a wonderful book in no small part because Ron Penton was still an undergrad while writing it. Which is, of course, also the book's main problem, because someone like me who last saw ivy-covered halls well over a decade ago is likely to be sick with envy that some little greenhorn has already found his way into the world of professional computer-book publishing (and by "professional" here I don't mean "published by recognizable press," I mean "the kid's already published three books in three years, and they're ALL monstrous tomes, when does he have time to program?"). But let's face it, you expect something different when you read a book by a young writer, be it the hot new novelist or the new kid on the programming block. And Penton delivers it; Data Structures for Game Programmers is, if you're a programmer, the most readable computer book you've ever come across. Penton seems to have a healthy disrespect for textbooks, which he alludes to a few times in the course of the book, and it shows in his writing; he wants to write something that will teach you more than a textbook by being more accessible. And in this goal, he succeeds. Brilliantly. I learned more about C templates from reading this book than I have in any other three books devoted to nothing but templates, and here they're just referred to a few times in passing. How is this possible? Because Penton explains things in language far easier to understand than that of most programming books; simply put, he hasn't yet been so overwhelmed by jargon that he can't see when he's written something the layperson might not be able to understand, which is a common ailment among programming authors.

Also, there's been some minor grumbling from some critics about the book's insistence on reinventing the wheel. Of course it does. That's how you learn to program-- you bang away at it, doing something that's already been done, until you figure out why it's done that way. There may be five or six people on the planet who can read it in a textbook and immediately figure out why it's the case (and, one assumes, they are the same people as those critics), but the rest of us are much happier seeing it this way.

If any computer book publishers happen to be reading this, you, especially, should be reading Data Structures for Game Programmers. See what it's like. Try to get the rest of your authors to emulate it. You'll have much happier customers that way.

This is one of the handful of books I've read since getting a library card again (a total, in fact, of four since 2003) that, after returning it to the library, went back on my Amazon wish list, because I want a copy for myself.