Languages Books

I bought this book thinking it also had the cassette with it. It does not. Customer reviews which write about the cassette are followed with a note from Amazon that it is a review for the "Hard Cover" edition.

If you notice right below the reading level for this item, it says "Hard Cover". So I thought that this was the edition that includes the cassette. It does not.

The book seems great otherwise, but you MUST know French and be able to read music though. It is difficult to know what tune you should be singing in if you can't read musical notes.

My 9.5 month old son lights up the minute I press play. We dance and bounce to these adorable songs while I am learning the words. I am very amused that he enjoys this cassette more than the ones I have with children's songs in english.

My 4 year old niece who doesn't know a word of French learnt to sing a long after a few days. My 3 year old son loves to listen to the songs, and reading the book while listening to the music. The book is pleasing for children will lots of illustrations. We also use the book to talk about what's on the pages and can spend a long time just reading it! This is a great gift idea.

My children love this book and cassette and we keep humming the tunes around the house. The children who sing the songs are very clear and the music is well done. I just wish there were more books in this series, I would've bought them all.

I Can Sing en Francais is fun and educational. The songs are a fun way to learn a new language because they have a nice melody and they deal with the basic words in French that beginners should know. Savez-Vous Planter Les Choux is my favorite song on the tape. The song lyrics in French and English are included in the book.

I absolutely love this story. It was perfect for my son who at the time was a challenge at bedtime. I stillsometimes read this to him (now 5) but almost nightly to my daughter who is now 3.
The story is captivating enough to keep the little ones interestwith just the right number of words per page so that you are turning pages frequently. It is also educational in that kids learn number ordinance, and different animals. This book is a great find. It is a book you will definately read for years to come, my copy is already five years old !

This is a great bedtime book! I read it often to the kids, ages 3-10, at the daycare where I work when we are putting them to bed at night. In fact I've read it so often that I have it nearly memorized. The repeatizeness is comforting and the story is somthing they can identify with! I whole heartedly recommend it!

I have two young sons who are 3 & 4 years old. Everynight before bedtime, they get to pick out six books for us to read before they get tucked in, and everynight, this book is one they want to hear!

We've gotten into the habit of me pointing at them when it's time and they get to say, "I don't want to go to bed!"

Wonderful book! I highly recommend it to all children! Not only is it a great message, but it allows the youngsters to become involved in the story.

I don't want to go to bed is a great example of a perfect children's story. It has all the elements that are required for a children's story. These are, funny characters, good illistrations, the ability to relate to kids, and teaches them a lesson. It also has some much needed humor. It has all the elements and it isnt long and drug out and boring like many other children's storys. In conclusion, it is a great book and I would recomend it to any kids.

This book was a easy reading and totally enjoyable. All young readers having a bad time going to bed should read this book. This book is also really great for babysitters to read to thier children, whom they put kids to bed and which this is a really great bed time story book. I personally like this book because of it's beautiful pictures and kids get a kick out of this book.

Image processing is used to improve the visual appearance and transmission of images to a the human eye. It also concerns the preparation of images with respect to measuring an image's features and structures. Now in a newly updated and significantly expanded fifth edition, "The Image Processing Handbook" by academician John C. Russ (Materials Science and Engineering Department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina) "The Image Processing Handbook" features an informative chapter explaining which visual cues elicit a response from the viewer; descriptions of the latest hardware and software for image acquisition and printing including digital cameras; multichannel images and an analysis of their principle components; the issues of deconvolution, extended dynamic range images, and image enlargement and interpolation, and so much more. Enhanced with more than 2000 illustrations, and with the availability of a companion CD-ROM, "The Image Processing Handbook" is a seminal and essential addition to professional and academic library Computer Science and Electrical Engineering reference collections.

This, the fifth edition of this industry standard reference book on image processing has been significantly expanded. There are some 600 new and revised images. A major feature of the new edition is to describe the new advances that have come about in hardware for image capture and printing. This includes both new versions of traditional equipment and new emerging technologies. The text has been expanded in areas like deconvolution, extended-dynamic-range images and multichannel imaging including principal-components analysis.

In general this book does not cover the background mathematics that enables image processing. Those are left to specialty books on the subject. Instead this book is intended to be used in conjunction with hands-on equipment where the reader is encouraged to experiment with different methods to determine what is needed for the particular job.

While suitable for use as a text, this book is really a handbook for technical users. The book is more oriented to what the various tools availavle to help actually do.

I am a biologist with a little background in math. Using this book and matlab I could quickly implement basic feature recognition tools to analyze microscope images. The book focuses on concepts and explains them in intuitive language rather than in mathematical terms. Overall, it worked perfectly for me, but could be over-simplying for people with technical background.

John Russ' book on image processing was never intended to be a textbook on how to understand and write your own image processing algorithms, as you might believe by looking through the table of contents. It does cover just about everything you would see in such a textbook, but from a user's standpoint of these operations, not as an author of image processing code who needs to understand the algorithms behind these operations. Instead, Russ explains all of the operations, their value in various applications, and provides many illustrations showing before and after pictures of what each operation does. There are no algorithms, pseudocode, or mathematics in this book.

The jewel in the crown of this book is the companion CD. It contains over 200 Photoshop plug-ins for performing the operations mentioned in this book. These plug-ins work on 8-bit grayscale and 24 bit RGB images and are divided into the categories of image adjustment, color manipulation, image math, boolean operations, Fourier processing, morphological operations, neighborhood processing, distance-map operations, thresholding, feature measurement, calibration, stereology, and surface rendering. The bad news is that you have to obtain the CD separately. If you need to understand the detailed mathematics behind such operations, you might consult Digital Image Processing by Gonzalez and Woods, and then come back to this book for the tools to accomplish the operations explained in that book. The updates to this fifth edition include an additional chapter on human vision and how it ties into image processing. Also, the author has updated his sections on image acquisition hardware and software to describe the latest tools available. Finally, the topic of tomographic imaging has been expanded and given its own chapter and the chapter on 3-D image acquisition has been deleted.

This is an excellent book on image processing from a systems engineering and user standpoint. You will be disappointed if you expect to learn the algorithms behind the techniques demonstrated in this book.

As others have stated, this book comes as close as you'll ever get to a single-source reference on image processing. But if I were ever going to shoot anything down in it, I'd say that a little more mathematical background on some topics (and maybe pseudocoded examples) would help. For example, in the satellite geometric correction section, only a very high level view is given yet this is a challenging topic that could use more depth. Geometric transformations in general could use more depth, e.g. camera calibrations or image warping/morphing/mapping to other projections for example. Another example would be the need for a little more depth on how to make slow algorithms fast ...like convolution multiplications for example. Sure, you could write out the multiplies and spot commonalities, then re-use results that appear in more than one subsequent equation and what not, but some exploration of matrix math and how to make it efficient would be nice. But again ...I'm picking at small things here, and if John's book covered everything that I'd like it to, then it would become 2 books, not one ...hey! Now THERE's an idea! A 2+ book set by John Russ that covers a broader range of topics and does so in greater depth! That's something that I'd pay for (and much better to read than Ballard & Brown)

I have not yet read all the book but there is a ton of very useful information within these pages. With this help I have been able to publish my very first book. Before I became frustrated because I didn't understand a lot of the instruction. This is extremely helpful. Everyone interested in publishing should have this book. Thank you for writing it.

I own about $150 worth of books on indie publishing (not counting this one.) They are some of the best books you can pick up on the subject. So it's easy to think "no one needs another book on indie publishing." If you think that, you'd be wrong.

This book fills in gaps that others miss. Including step by step D-I-Y typesetting so specific a trained monkey could do it.

While not every part of this book will equally apply to everyone and their personal situation, it is definitely a much needed addition on any indie artist's shelf.

While I feel some things an indie should contract out individually for, which specific things will depend on the individual's specific skill set. i.e. If you are a graphic artist, you probably don't need to hire a designer, but if you have no eye for graphic design or no skills in that area, you may want to.

One of the great benefits of this book is it assumes a D-I-Y approach to all facets of the book. So instead of just assuming you personally can't design a cover, or typeset a book, or whatever this book tells you how to do it yourself.

If what is outlined is outside your abilities after it's been explained to you, then of course one can contract out. But when operating on a shoestring it's good to do some of it on your own.

It is probably true to say that writing a book has never been easier than it is today. The sheer facility of composition with a computer word processing programme has removed one of the great barriers to producing a large volume of text. At the same time, it is also probably true to say that it has never been more difficult to place a book with a publishing company, the reasons for which are persuasively presented at the beginning of April Hamilton's wonderfully comprehensive guide to independent publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide.

As a man, as a previously published author, it might seem that I would have no need of such a self-help volume. Men, supposedly, hesitate to ask for advice or assistance, particularly from women; published authors are - erm - published. Why would one of them want to think about independent publishing? Well, the fact is that I, along with many other published writers, am published no longer. I am still writing, however, and so independent publishing is an increasingly beckoning way out of the impasse I find myself in. But how on earth does one go about it? Enter Ms Hamilton.

The IndieAuthor Guide leads even the chronically inept (I'm thinking of myself) along the road from desire to achievement. It seems to me that there is nothing the would-be independent author needs to know that is not covered, in detail and with examples, in this splendid guide. Even when Ms Hamilton tells her readers that she cannot offer advice on something (the legal aspects of Kindle publication, for example), she promptly offers a link to a site where such advice will be forthcoming.

Some readers might possibly be disappointed that this guide is particularly centred on independent publication through Amazon and its subsidiaries, but the truth is that Amazon is very much the big boy in this particular world now. That minor quibble aside, the vast majority of the advice in the book is as relevant to other independent publishing venues as it is to Amazon.

All in all, The IndieAuthor Guide seems to me to be an excellent and timely helpmate to writers pondering new ways of setting their work before the public. "Come on, you can do it," this guide seems to say, and it does not deceive in this. A five-star piece of work if ever there was one.

After recently writing and publishing two books of my own and spending most of my time learning the hard way (trial and error - mostly error) I was kicking myself for not taking the time and doing the right searches to find this book before and not after the 100's if not 1000's of hours of writing time. After a while you quit counting. April's book is indeed a breath of fresh air in otherwise stuffed rooms of misleading, and often wrong information. I was very appreciative of finding so much information in one source. Took a few pages to unravel the meaning of the title - Indieauthor Guide - but this may have been intentional as the style of writing develops like a story - one chapter at a time - uncovering the hidden secrets in the publishing industry. Great job - great writing - April did her homework.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is informative, well outlined, well written, and covers a topic close to my heart - self publishing. This book is divided into the following 12 chapters:

1. Indie authorship: An introduction
2. Publishing options
3. Getting organized
4. Creating your brand
5. DIY formatting for POD
6. Editing and revising
7. Designing your own book cover
8. Publishing through CreateSpace
9. Publishing for Kindle
10. Publishing for other eBook formats
11. Promotion
12. An HTML primer

At one point the author says that subsidy and vanity publishing don't offer any advantages over POD publishing these days. I'm not sure this is true. After reading Aaron Shepard's book entitled "Aiming at Amazon" (ISBN: 093849743X) last year I learned that small text does not print as well with POD. Nor do pictures in the book using POD technology. And if the book is going to be over 200 pages or so, then POD might get a little expensive as compared to traditional printing methods. But if you understand the ins and outs of POD publishing, then it is definitely the route to go in order to sell your writing on Amazon. A good, but slightly dated, book on POD is "Print-on-Demand Book Publishing" (ISBN: 0972380132).

Although I haven't read "The Frugal Book Promoter" (ISBN: 193299310X), it is my understanding that it goes into some depth about the importance of branding when promoting one's book. Chapter 4 in the instant book did a nice job explaining the importance of branding.

Although I haven't read "Perfect Pages" (ISBN: 0938497332), it is my understanding that it goes into some depth about how to create formatted Word documents for Print on Demand (POD). Chapter 5 in the instant book did a wonderful job explaining how to use Word to format your self published book copy for POD.

This afternoon at Barnes & Noble I read "The Frugal Editor" (ISBN: 0978515870) and found it to be a good book. But I liked the coverage of how to edit and revise (or get help in editing and revising) in Chapter 6 of the instant book. Well done!

Mr. Shepard in "Aiming at Amazon" explained how to go about designing your book's cover if you were going to use Lightning Source, Inc. as your POD printing service. In Chapter 7 of the instant book we are told how to design a cover if we are going to use Amazon's CreateSpace printing service. I think this coverage could have gone into a little more detail on how to use and customize graphic files. But it was certainly good coverage on the topic.

The material covered in chapters 8 and 9 I have not seen in print in other books yet. They were well done. And Chapter 10 was informative.

Chapter 11 covered promotion well. I liked it. Other books on the subject I like are: "Sell Your Book on Amazon" (ISBN: 1432701967), "Plug Your Book!" (ISBN: 0977240614), and "The Author's Guide to Building an Online Platform" (ISBN: 1884956823). But consider getting another book ["The Web Savvy Writer" (ISBN: 0977830403)] sold as an ebook by its author, and an audio book entitled "Secrets of Successful Blogging System" (ISBN: 0978806018) which is kind of pricey, but really good. If you get all these resources, read them, and study them, then you should have an excellent idea about how to go about marketing your tome or tomes.

Chapter 12 was OK. But I think I would have liked the book better if it had been left out. It kind of felt as though it was not within the scope of the book's subject matter. All in all, this book is a gem. I think it is good as a stand-alone guide, but it will really shine if used in conjunction with other books I have referenced in this review. 5 stars!

As a veteran Oracle DBA, I had some potential customers with both Informix and Oracle to support and since I had not used Informix in 5 years, I needed to brush up on my Informix skills. This book is unfortunately now out of print, but my copy from 5 years ago is still used on occasion. I agree with other poster that on a general DBA basis, it covers Informix quite well. I just wish that it had more coverage of high available clustering and replication topics as well as troubleshooting problems with Informix. Still good and only book that really covers Informix in detail.

This is a really good look and is suitable for both the novice and expert. There should have been more coverage of topics on HA & Replication. Also it is sad that it does not cover the latest releases. As this is out of publication, I paid a bit more than original price for a used look, but it was worth its weight in gold. The reseller from Ohio promptly sent me the book and answered my calls. Book arrived in new and good Condition. The book's website has been neglected. It needs some attention. Visited the InformiX users group for info and latest trial software after talking to the author, when I found that the CD needed keys. In the end everything was available at www.iiug.org and I had a pleasant experience using the book.

All In All A Good Book.

Of all the books I have read about Informix, Flannery's is the easiest to use. The topics are well organized and cross-referenced, which helps me find what I need quickly. In addition, the book has a web site which keeps it current. Also, the book's numerous examples make it easy for me to apply the knowledge it contains. I love the formatting and the way that I don't have to read hundreds of pages to find the answers. Well done!

This book is awesome, I just wish more topics including replication, more detailed troubleshooting techniques, and finally a good DBA practices/methods section. I now have two books, one for work and one for home. It is constantly open on my desk (both places). The sections on privileges and optimizing indexes have been my favorites due to the easy layout. Each section presented the infomation in clear and concise ways, allowing for quick implementation.

As a new DBA (1yr.), I can't thank Mr. Flannery enough. I only wish the rest of the Informix Press books would strive to meet or exceed this standard.

Since I'm new to Informix, I was forever looking for a book that would help me get a better understanding on how to support Informix databases. The Informix user manuals were very unorganized make it very difficult to get the answers I needed. This book is well organized, making it easy to locate the needed information. There are plenty of useful examples that are easy to understand. This book has now become my main reference source. For the novice or expert, this book should should be in your reference library.

When taking university courses in philosophy, this was the first text I ever used. Several years later, I now own some 200+ philosophy texts, but I consider this to be one of the most valuable. When reading original sources, I find myself returning again and again to Grayling's An Introduction to Philosophical Logic for reminders and clarification. This is my most well-worn philosophy book. If use and usefulness are measures of value, this text is a diamond.

If you are a beginner in philosophy, particularly analytic philosophy, this text and William Lycan's Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)should be your first two purchases.

I have found A.C.Grayling's _An Introduction to Philosophical Logic_ to be very helpful. It is a very non-technical and clear discussion of necessity, analyticity, a priority and other related concepts.

Sean Choi http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/sean-choi/

Enough centuries have passed that everyone should know this: If you want a clear and readable exposition of a difficult and complex subject, you ask a British philosopher.

In that grand tradition of solidity and soundness, A.C. Grayling here provides, without fanfare but with a good deal of clarity and wit, a thoroughly reliable and lucidly intelligible introduction to logic as this topic is understood within the broad spectrum of analytic philosophy.

A standard textbook that is now in its third edition (with extensive revisions and additions by the author), this volume also makes for useful reading by interested laypersons (who may also know Grayling as the author of two excellent volumes in the _Past Masters_ series, on Russell and Wittgenstein). It is highly recommended to anyone seeking an accessible introduction to the field.

Grayling is also recommended as a master of what Brand Blanshard memorably called "philosophical style." The oracular pronouncements of the world's Nietzsches, Kierkegaards, Wittgensteins, and Ayn Rands usually get all the attention, but what really keeps the enterprise of philosophy going is the much-underappreciated art and skill of writing fine expository prose. In that respect, this volume is a gem.

Lucid book on the philosophical implications of modern logic.

I wish my philosophy professors had assigned this book BEFORE they plunged us straight into rote drills in propositional and predicate logic. Grayling shows you what exactly all these sterile-seeming symbolic manipulations have to do with epistemology and metaphysics.

Also check out books by Graham Priest.

Over the years I return to Grayling's Introduction to Philosophical Logic to review and re-think some of the big issues of contemporary philosophy. Grayling clearly articulate the reasons for the debates and the sides that are battling it out. He covers propositions, necessity, existence, meaning, truth, reference, etc., and then finishes off by venturing into the fray between realism and antirealism. I just think this is one of the best philosophy books you'll ever buy, read, and use again.

I just finished my first year in college, and as I had a summer off, I decided I wanted to learn Italian so I can go to Italy next summer. I found Pimsleur to be absolutely perfect for mastering an accent, and making the language come natrually. I can say many things with ease now, and never doubt my accent or usage. I would suggest supplementing it with a grammar book so you will actually be fluent. I used Italian step-by-step by Berlitz. This is the perfect combination if you are SERIOUS about learning Italian. The Berlitz book is hard to stick with, but it is very thorough, and if you are disciplined, the two work together to make you very comfortable in Italian. Since I am a visual learner, it helps a lot to know what words I'm saying with Pimsleur, instead of just memorizing the sounds and having no idea how to write it. I'm just starting level III Italian, and I'm very excited, because I'm learning now in conversation the things I learned from the book a couple weeks ago. This has proved to be a perfect combination for me. I can't wait to start Pimsleur Spanish!

I disagree with the previous reviewer on one point...many people buying this product certainly will be using it to speak with Italian friends, or to spend more than just a few days or weeks in Italy. Even at this rudimentary level, it's important to learn the second personal singular informal forms, which are used more than perhaps you might think in everyday usage. (Believe or not after speaking for a short while with someone in a social situation in Italy, it's not uncommon to ask the equivalent of "can I use the "tu" form with you?".) Italians are also rather forgiving with foreigners trying to learn their native tongue, and I think the situation of having to use the "Lei" form with close friends seems more awkward than using the "tu" form with strangers (who will be impressed you're able to say anything at all).

Other than that this is a pretty good way to learn a language (yes, a short grammar guide/word list would have been awesome). I recommend "Italian Verb Drills" and "Teach Yourself Italian"-- which is this cute if antiquated book (replace all the "egli" and "essa" with "lui" and "lei" if you're trying to learn how to speak). For vocabulary, do the Vocabulearn series. Do get a grammar book, it helps with the prepositions etc. which can be tricky.

I have used Pimsler for both Italian and French to the II level. The formats are identical. They're easy to listen to driving back and forth to work, especially if your trip happens to be 30 minutes each way. The Pimsler method of repetition and reinforcement seems to work well enough, but it doesn't leave you with a vocabulary suited to tourism. You get a good sense or "feel" for how the language is spoken; you get essential verbs but not a very extensive vocabulary.

I really felt there was an excessive emphasis on "familiar" (use only to friends, relatives, small children) verb forms. Nobody who uses this course will end up "conversational" in the sense that they'll be pleasantly chatting with Italian friends. So the familiar verb forms are not likely to be anything a tourist or businessman will either hear or speak. Those situations will necessarily call for "formal" verb forms.

My daughter is taking advanced level Italian language courses at the University of Colorado, and she states that familiar verb forms are barely mentioned, because they aren't useful to someone at that level of proficiency.

I'm a tourist with foreseeable needs in Italy like making my way around airports, train stations, markets and museums, renting a hotel room or car, ordering in a restaurant and forth. At the end of Italian II, I should have a vocabulary and dialogues at least minimally suited for those kinds of purposes, but I don't. The course has no "tourist" vocabulary or outlook at all. The focus is more on things like playing tennis with "friends" and other improbable "familiar" situations that are essentially useless to someone focused on traveling.

But I'm buying Italian III anyway because I've come this far with the Pimsler system and it seems to work with the above limitations. If you're planning to use this course to prepare for travel in Italy, you should also carry a Rough Guide dictionary phrasebood ("Italian - A Rough Guide Phrasebood," ...) available through Amazon. It contains "dialogues" more relevant to the traveler, which you can readily adopt after completing Pimsler Italian II.

I highly recommend Pimsleur I, II, & III (I just started III). In addition to Pimsleur, I bought every self teaching book out there. By far, I have learned the most with Pimsleur. I do think supplementing the CDs with some books and exercises is helpful, but not totally necessary. It helps me to know how to spell the words (& it is easy w/ Italian) and also the prepositions & direct and indirect objects might be better learned with a book. Anything by Marcel Danesi is good. (Italian Now is an excellent book)

Expensive - but I think I learned more with this method than I would have with a tutor here in the USA; and that would have been more expensive.

I only wish the series went beyond level III.

I do a lot of driving around and I feel I am making good use of my time. I don't have experience with other tapes, but the Pimsleur method seems good. One point that I would like to make is that you must listen to the tapes many times to really grasp what you have learned. Some lessons that involve conjugating in the past tense must be repeated over and over to catch the verb tenses. I use 501 Italian verbs as a point of reference, which I think is necessary to get the whole picture of what Pimsluer is teaching. This is the third foreign language that I have learned. At the stage of life I am at (kids, carpools) sitting in a classroom is out of the question. I consider Pimsleur a good way of learning, but I do agree that it lacks tourist situations. However I feel I have gained the tools to figure out what I need to know when I return to Italy.

This is a good book. I've been studying Japanese as a hobby for a year or so and making slow but steady progress. I use this book all the time. I love the author's clear, pleasant style, through which I discern an amiable, helpful, knowledgeable person. Reading this book is like being helped with your Japanese by a good friend. I would recommend this book to anyone.

I hope the author does a second edition and alters it slightly. The book's major problem from my perspective is that the author did not decide whether he wanted to write a reference grammar or to write a textbook to teach Japanese verbs.

If it is meant to be a reference grammar, it minimally needs a good index and an informative table of contents. As it is, it is really hard to find anything in the book. Sometimes I know I have seen something in the book, but I am reduced to going through the book page by page to look for it. There is no index, and the table of contents, which consists solely of entries like "Base 1 + nakareba," would only be useful to someone who already knows the stuff in the book. It might be nice also to tighten up organization a bit. As it is, the book is studded with subsections that begin something like "Oh, as long as I'm telling you this, now would be a good time to mention this." So important topics get buried in sections nominally covering other topics. And, since so much in this book depends on the bases from which verb forms are made, it might be nice to have one section where the formation of all the bases is laid out in methodical fashion so that the user, confronted with some utterance like "'you desu' after base 3," can easily track down what base 3 is without paging through the whole book.

However, the author actually seems to have set out to write more of a textbook than a reference grammar because the book generally assumes that the reader knows what has already been covered earlier in it. If that is the case, the author needs to include exercises so that students can actually practice what he is explaining and to give more thought to systematically building up vocabulary and grammar from the rudimentary to the complex as the book moves on. And even then, a decent index and table of contents would help.

I actually think this book would be easier to nudge into the direction of a reference grammar than a text book, and that's what I would advise.

But, please, don't let my comments deter you from buying this book. It has been a great help to me and it will be to you, too.

I found this book through the author's website, which offers an excellent explanation of Japanese verb use. The book is fantastic, really helpful. I recommend it.

I started learning Japanese last summer. In the past year I ordered may be 20 introduction level Japanese books. This one is among the ones I read most often (beside Japanese dicitionary). It is very well written and easy to understand with a lot of examples for each of the different verb forms. You will find yourself still be able to pick up something even when you are skipping chapters because each indiviuals lesson is organized very well. So when you are reading some Japanese book and find yourself stuck by some verb form that you don't understand, you can go ahead and find the answer without flipping back and forth looking up some other unknown terminology. This book is well worth the price.

I purchased this book a year ago and actually started using it a couple of weeks ago...My only regret now is to have not opened it much much sooner. This verb book is fantastic. SHort lessons with straight-to-the point illustrations. Japanese language suddenly appeared to me much easier than i thought.
A must-have.

I bought this book because I started teaching myself Japanese with the Pimsleur audio series. The series is a great way to practice hearing and speaking a new language, but despite claims to the contrary, I think you really have to learn the grammar if you want to speak competently. I found this book to be a great supplement for exactly that reason. Whenever I ran into a verb construction in a specific context, I could always look it up in here and learn the details of application and how to generalize the expression.

It's absolutely worth the price to have around.

This is a great book to start with for those who want to learn JavaScript. It has excellent discussion of the basics of the language with plenty of examples to follow along with. Most of the example scripts are small and basic in nature. But, they can still make useful additions to any website that might need image rollovers, cookies or pop-up windows. In the later chapters there are a few larger and slightly more complicated scripts like an image slide show. The book also has thorough coverage of basic programming concepts like variables, arrays, loops and such. Therefore, any prior programming or scripting knowledge is not an absolute requirement. All the code in this book worked smoothly with errors found only in the HTML code. The minor, and somewhat strange, errors in the HTML code really didn't create any problems. The multiple choice final exam did provide a descent review of the material at the end of the book. However, I would have preferred answers with a little explanation rather than just the correct letter.

The only issue I had with this book is the final chapters. I did expect a little more exposure to advanced scripts and concepts. There were only a few examples and most were scripts from dynamicdrive.com with little or no discussion of new concepts. Much of the final two chapters were just descriptions with URL's of sophisticated scripts that can be downloaded from Dynamic Drive. This was a bit disappointing since most designers/developers probably know how to find and install scripts from the many code libraries on the web.

Overall, JavaScript Demystified is a great book for a true beginner with no prior experience with scripting or programming. This is not the best book for those who just want to copy scripts or who are expecting advanced topics. This is a book for those who want to actually learn JavaScript. I definitely would look forward to a new book by the same author in the same format that covers advanced JavaScript.

I felt that this book was very good for beginners as well as a good reference for those that have a strong background in html and JavaScript.

I recently attended a JavaScript course where the instruct have a difficult time explaining JavaScript in clear Englishing. I'm not a programmer, so I needed someone to explain this in simple English. This book make JavaScript clear enough so that I passed the course.

Clear and concise, done with not one wit of 'speaking down' to you, and the explanations are straightforward. The material is introduced a piece at a time, and with reasonable review questions that are surprisingly thorough.
I would suggest it to anyone who wants a good reference to JavaScript as well. Buy it you won't be disappointed.

I you ever wondered how the professional web page developers dress up their web pages, then take a look at this book. Every trick that I've seen on commercial web pages are revealed in this book. I easily copied code from the book into my web pages and made mine work like a pro web page. Good book.

Saramago at his best! As most of what I have read from Saramago, this book is superbly written. One would never imagine that a novel written in a sort of "stream of consciousness" form, would be plesant and absorbing.

The plot and characters are absolutely universal. The story could have taken place anywhere in the world, in the not so distant future, where man is living the desolate life he created for himself.

Freedon is restricted, dreams are non-existent, and everything is colored in different shades of gray.

Even though at first this may seem like a very sad book, it does have its silver lining: we still have a chance to make the world whatever we want it to be.

Finally, a comment about the main character, Cipriano Algor: Suffice it to say he generates a very strong passion....

Do you ever feel like the world around you, the concrete and steel world, has wrapped you in its austere façade? Do you ever feel like the beauty of individuality is hidden in a world that cares not for the human spirit but for the technological advancement of society? Do you ever feel like you would love to embrace your talent for art and carry out the tasks that enhance your reason for existence, but you find that your job at the big corporation consumes all your time and energy? Do you ever feel threatening fear that your abilities may become obsolete and that society may dispose of you at any moment? Saramago's Characters in La Caverna feel like this when they find out that the corporation that buys their ceramic pottery and sells it to the public, will no longer purchase their obsolete products. The book's captivating flow of occurrences unleashes a series of thoughts in the characters' minds as to existence and the due respect for love and life in general. Great book. Once you start reading it, you will not put it down until it is finished.

La Caverna José Saramago

Carta del nieto de Cipriano Algor encontrada en la sala de su casa y dirigida a sus padres.

Un día desperté a la luz de las estrellas, me encontré perdido en un mar de gente que pasaba a mi lado, todos con la vista puesta en algo. Y así, caminante errante, partí sin rumbo en busca de una salida. Pero salida hacia donde? No estaba dentro de la vida misma. Como era posible escapar a la vida, vivir otra existencia fuera de la mía, de vagabundo errante por el mundo. Vi que podía ver cosas que los demás no podían, pero el mundo era tan inmenso que me costaba trabajo creer que la única persona que pudiese ver las cosas tal y como son, o tal y como yo creía que eran era yo. Por eso era un inadaptado, un paria dentro del grupo social en el cual vivía, un loco u n alienado, un tonto, un holgazán. Me pasaba los días tratando de encontrar una salida mientras los demás se pasaban la vida disfrutando, absortos en la visión de lo que ellos creían que era la felicidad extrema, la dicha, la pasión, el amor. Pero yo sabia que había algo mas allá de las cosas y tenia que averiguarlo. Por fin con paciencia e ingenio logre encontrar en uno de los pisos altos de la edificación una grieta que me condujo al mundo externo. Mi impresión fue tal que no pude dejar de lanzar un grito de libertad. Durante tanto tiempo había vivido encerrado en ese centro que era el mundo, con sus colegios, iglesias, tiendas, con su aire acondicionado y sin mas luz que aquella artificial que iluminaba como un eterno sol y que cuando era niño había confundido con lo que mis padres habían llamado estrellas. Pero ahora era libre. Decidí dejar el centro y nunca mas volver, iría por la carretera en busca de mi abuelo Cipriano, quien según la leyenda había dejado el centro en sus inicios y se había ido a vivir lejos, como en otro mundo, un mundo donde el sol no estaba solo en los libros de historia; donde el agua corría libremente en ríos; donde las estrellas brillaban verdaderas en la noche; y donde la vida, a pesar de ser mas rustica, era mas vida, más humana, sin mecanizaciones de ningún tipo. Por fin después de tanto tiempo, era libre.

Esta situación orwelliana que se describe en la novela de Saramago, es el desplazamiento del hombre por sus maquinas. Como el centro comercial deja de ser una estructura al servicio del hombre para pasar a ser una estructura con hombres a su servicio. El pequeño negocio de Cipriano Algor es dejado a un lado y este debe tomar la difícil situación de irse a mudar en el centro, donde todo es artificial, irreal y risible, pues de lo sublime a lo ridículo solo hay un paso. La novela esta escrita de forma compacta, con todos los párrafos representando sin divisiones, pensamientos, comentarios, diálogos y demás, en lo que para quien no ha leído a Saramago antes es un poco confuso su estilo, pero es la mejor manera de escribir, pues no pierde su fuerza narrativa, deteniéndose a poner excesivos signos de puntuación. En ese sentido comparto con él la manía de escribir oraciones kilométricas a pesar de lo que dicen, que, después de ciertos párrafos, las ideas se confunden y la oración no se hace clara. Escribir para mí es un desafío diario y creo que los lectores deben ser desafiados a seguir las pautas del escritor. La novela merece la pena y bien vale el esfuerzo de sus 454 paginas.

Luis Méndez.

Excelente relato! Saramago nos ilustra de manera que despertemos a la realidad.Que tenemos la capacidad de ver luz aun estando entre las sombras,como podemos seguir siendo lo que somos con el solo hecho de ver,analizar y no dejarnos deslumbrar.Es una critica a la llamada vida actual,de las grandes empresas y su virtual retorno a la esclavitud del cuerpo y el espiritu.

I had the honor of meeting José Saramago at a book-signing in Lisbon's Chiado district shortly after he won the Nobel Prize in 1998. At the time, I wondered if receiving the prize would cause my favorite novelist to sit back and write nothing worthy of note, or nothing at all.

Fortunately, "The Cavern" bears the earmarks of earnestness, diligence, and love of the Portuguese language that characterize Saramago's earlier works. But as a novel it's disappointing. The characters are ordinary and there's not much of a plot.

The central theme of "The Cavern" is that a giant, impersonal, and arrogantly managed shopping center, the Centro, is spreading like an oil slick and sucking the commercial life out of the region. The main character, Cipriano Algor, an artisan potter living in a rural hamlet and eking out a living selling dishes to the Centro, is one of the shopping complex's victims. The Centro treats its suppliers ruthlessly: work with us according to the one-sided terms we impose or we'll dispense with you; and we'll dispense with you anyway when you're no longer useful to us. And the Centro no longer wants to sell Algor's stoneware; its customers prefer plastic tableware that's cheaper and less breakable.

Thus, much of the novel consists of the petty indignities the Centro visits on the desperate and humiliated Algor, a situation complicated by the fact that Marçal Gacho, Algor's live-in son-in-law, is a security guard for the Centro and wants to move there with his wife Marta.

There's a plot there, but it's thin, and it's stifled by overlong narratives, asides, and commentaries that dominate the novel. "The Cavern" is like an opera with much singing and little action. Indeed, few events disturb the novel's languor until the final 35 or so pages of the 350-page-long Portuguese version. And there's little that's compelling about Cipriano Algor, Marçal Gacho, Marta, or the family dog, Achado. They're all nice and all without depth. (And incongruously for such uneducated folk, they often speak the king's Portuguese.) Algor is a stiff, diffident and lonely widower whose inability to act on his interest in Isaura, the widow across town, exasperates the reader. Saramago relies heavily on the family dog for character development (a danger sign), extolling Achado's virtues. But in the end, Achado's ordinary canine behavior fails to inspire interest in itself or to illuminate its owners' personalities.

Moreover, some of Saramago's commentaries are trite and cranky; they lack the acuity of the sketches of human behavior and travails that enliven other Saramago novels. Algor, his family, and his dog are portrayed as the salt of the earth, rather like the Joads in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." The conflict between Algor and the arrogant Centro is an allegory for Saramago's dislike of globalization and the liberalization of the world economy--a dislike he made clear in 1998, when he argued, "Injustices multiply, inequalities become worse, ignorance grows, misery spreads. The same schizophrenic humanity able to send instruments to [Mars] to study the composition of its rocks witnesses indifferently the deaths of millions from hunger. . . . Governments fail to do [their duty], because they don't know how to, because they can't, or because they don't want to. Or because those who effectively govern the world don't let them: the multinational and intercontinental corporations whose power, absolutely undemocratic, has reduced almost to nothing what once remained of the ideal of democracy."

In sum, Saramago stands with the protestors of Seattle, Quebec City, and Genoa. His worldview may stem from the degrading poverty and oppression his grandparents experienced in rural Portugal (see his Nobel Prize acceptance speech). Yet if "The Cavern" were less rigid, it would acknowledge that the same liberalization that creates the Centro should permit Algor (with the help of a government economic-development agency) to leave behind the Centro's nouveau-riche customers and haughty management for the armies of foreign tourists who want to buy handmade Portuguese stoneware, or to sell his goods over the Internet to collectors in Montreal, Adelaide, and Sapporo. Algor is simply trying to sell in the wrong place, and it's not the Centro's fault if it rebuffs him, though it may point to flaws in the Centro's marketing strategy. (On the last point: Saramago's portrayal of the Centro is unrealistic. He presents it as omnipotent and destined to be unbound by time. But the Centro's rigidity and pomposity would appear to consign it to the impermanence of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias, fated to become "the decay / Of that colossal wreck . . ." "[h]alf sunk" amid "[t]he lone and level sands . . . ."

It's worth noting that Portugal, like Ireland, has been a European economic success story. According to a Portuguese government report, "Between 1986 and 2000 the Portuguese economy grew by 3.6% per annum, compared with 2.5% for the EU [European Union]. . . . Real GDP growth averaged 5.0% per annum in 1986-90, compared with 3.3% for the EU as a whole, and was the highest in the EU and second highest in the OECD during that period. Growth slowed to 1.7% during 1991-95 in response to a deteriorating European business cycle, but still exceeded the EU average of 1.5%. Portugal pulled ahead in subsequent years, and growth of 3.4% in 1996-2000 was above the EU average of 2.6%." Accompanying that growth, new shopping centers like Lisbon's Amoreiras and Columbo malls have emerged. They have been very popular, and have coincided with a decline in some traditional business districts. Yet Portugal hardly seems economically, socially or culturally the worse for these changes, Saramago's lament notwithstanding. The country was markedly better off in those respects in 1998 than it was when I first visited it in 1992.

My recommendation: if you're a Saramago fan, you may enjoy "The Cavern." But if you're new to him, start by reading one of his better novels, like "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis," "Blindness," or "All the Names."