Software Books

I bought three books to teach myself how to produce DVDs. The Erica Sadun book is for advanced users and was not helpful to me. The Bob LeVitus "Little iDVD Book" is probably one of the most poorly organized and edited books I've ever come across on any subject.

Pogue's "Missing Manual", on the other hand, is comprehensive, clear and well-organized. I've produced about half a dozen DVDs since reading (and re-reading) Pogue's book and it clearly made a huge difference in what I was able to construct using iDVD.

In my opinion, this is the only book you need to read to learn how to produce movies using iDVD.

Beyond teaching readers to work with iDVD, Pogue also offers loads of helpful suggestions about editing in general. This book is outstanding.

I love this book! I was ready to give up trying to use iMovie because of a small glitch that was incurring. After browsing thru the book the very first time I opened it, I came across the trouble I was having with iMovie. Mr. Pogue directed me to the correct settings and I am now having a great time editing my DV movies.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone attempting to use iMovie. There is so much more to this program than Apple addresses in the help file. Mr. Pogue's writing is concise but not out of reach for the average Mac user.

I have many books by Mr. Pogue and I would recommend any of them if you are stumped and need a well explained how-to-manuel.

Can it get any simpler !! ha ha ha ha ha
I found this book to be extremely informative and easy to understand (especially since i am yet to purchace a mac and digital video cammera ).. I will have no hesitation now to go out and purchase a Mac and a Digital cammera .. and feel confident making my first feature film or "Home Movie " LOL

It's OK. It has about the same amount of material as the "iMovie 2 for Macintosh Visual Quickstart Guide" - The missing manual is fatter because it contains additional stories and things that a reader might find amusing, but that are not particular relevant to the topic. The section on movie making basics is very good. For an expanded view see "The Five C's of Cinematography". I thought I would find more information in this book since it is fatter than in the VQG, but it ended up that they are about even in content.

First I have to give props to David Pogue and his Missing Manual series. As a bookseller and computer geek I've long favored the Dummies books as the best entry-level source for third-party information on software. However, O'Reilly made a smart move when they turned their attention on that market and grabbed Dummies standby Pogue to headline the new series. The Missing Manuals (and their mutant-dogcow mascot) are a credit to O'Reilly and a must-have... assuming, that is, that they cover the program you need. The series is still too small, but I'm sure it won't stay that way.

Now, to the book itself. If you need to do something with iMovie, it's in there. That pretty much covers what I need to say in this review, but it doesn't cover everything the book has to offer. Remember back in the 80s when the Mac made desktop publishing a reality, only to unleash a torrent of wretchedly amateurish graphic design? Well, Pogue spends much of the first couple of chapters attempting to prevent that from happening. This book starts off with a very basic primer on video production and how to use your equipment -- assumed to be a typical consumer-grade MiniDV camcorder, but it covers other options as well, particularly video bridges and the like.

The meat of the book discusses iMovie 2's capabilities, including discussions of its weaknesses and how to work around them. Effects, titles, and transitions are discussed in detail, including some useful information on crossfades (never fade straight to black -- instead, you want a black stillframe). Conversion to other formats is also an issue, and a significant part of the book discusses postproduction using QuickTime Pro. Directions are given for converting your work for DVD or VCD as well.

The issue I have with the book is largely its focus on iMovie in MacOS Classic, and the bugs that are present in that version that might not be in the OS X version. Screenshots all come from 9.x, with the only Aqua material being the interface of iMovie itself. I don't mark down for this since the program operates more or less the same, but an inexperienced user may have trouble. (I might note as well that the book works just as well for iMovie 3, which has a superficially different interface but handles more or less identically.)

So, yeah. If you're doing video production on iMovie, this is the book to get, hands down.

This is the JUnit book for you if you're looking into JUnit and basically get the idea - there's frameworks out there which will run tests that you write and JUnit is one of them- but don't know much more. It gets straight to the point and pretty quickly takes you from the no-nothing state to being able to using JUnit. At least, it did that in my case.

In a nutshell, this book will get you testing fast so you can move on and think about other, more interesting things.


All stuff, no stuffing, easy to read, well edited, well indexed, no time wasting exposition, what else do you want?

Example code has Manning's "numbered dot" technique whereby they highlight POI right in the code using footnotes that look like big black dots with numbers inside them, with accompanying text a little further down, a feature I find helpful.

Most technical publishers try hard to make their books worth the money they ask: Wiley , O'Reilly , Manning and Apress come to mind right away. This book is a good one from Manning and a good example of why Manning is a great niche publisher.

This is a readable, practical, and deep book. It's one of those books which teaches or refreshes Java and OO theory and practice as you read. I am also reading it for pleasure!

This is a great book. It is directed at users of JUnit, the Java unit testing framework. But in my mind the book gives sound advice for solving your programming problems in general, not just for Java or JUnit testing. It stresses the importance of unit testing, programming to interfaces instead of implementations and just simple common sense. The author is clearly passionate about his field and extremely experiences. The combination of enthusiasm and experience comes through on every page.

This isn't necessarily the best introduction for absolute beginners (I would recommend /Pragmatic Unit Testing/ for that), but it is required reading for server-side Java, as most other reviewers have pointed out. But it's more than that--it's one of those rare computer books that transcends its subject matter. Why? Because it can make you a better programmer. While some of the credit can rightly be given to unit testing and Test-Driven Development in general, Rainsberger's book makes you /see/ better ways to write and refactor your code. The breadth and depth of examples is astonishing--he convincingly shatters "but it's too hard to test that" arguments with well-researched, non-trivial examples. In fact, I'd say that this is almost a better J2EE tutorial than most books about J2EE proper.

I'm withholding a star for one reason: the book doesn't cover GUI testing tools like Jemmy, JFCUnit, or Abbot/Costello. These JUnit extensions are ripe for a book with this depth; it's just too bad that this couldn't be that book. Other than that, I find that I turn to Rainsberger's book far more often than any other testing book or online reference.

Rainsberger does a very good job of detailing the techniques to unit test difficult code; including xml, ejb, servlets, jsps etc.

At 43 years old I too was wondering if this was just for kids, but it definitely is not. It opens your mind to move beyond the following the step by step instructions in most all the other books out there. One must remember the kit was called Mindstorms for a reason, so you can develop your own ingenious creations. This book helps you do just that. As for the story, it is written in a mature fashion and is integrated perfectly to hold your interest, adult or child. My mind drifts back to those old movies with the Mummy, and pyramids and tombs. Hootloads of fun!

did you really write this book have not read it yet but it's being shipped to my house.

I bought this to introduce my grandchildren to science projects. Their ages are 7 and 10. We have no special contest or competition to enter. Not sure exactly what I expected but I was not disappointed. This has awesome potential for learning. Actually, my grandkids were impressively advanced in what they could accomplish. The suggested robot to build was fairly complicated. My 10 yo took charge, with the 7 yo taking his turn. When completed I could not get close to the control computer. They took over!!! The kit could use some better instructions. I recommend one of several additional books to get a better feel for it. Next we will try the programming. Good way to spend lots of quality time with your kids. Just make sure you have big blocks set aside! Love it!

This book is a wonderful introduction into program and design with the NXT, and yes, we've been using the RCX as well. The book is well laid out. The story is engaging and gives the tasks purpose.

I really like the templates provided in the book. It gives anyone a method of organizing their thoughts, so they can go ahead with the building and programming and know they're headed down the right path.

I bought this for my children because I have no interest in robotics or programming, and I've enjoyed it as much as they have.

The value of this book is not in the number of documented designs, but how it teaches you the process to come up with your own designs. It even does it in a much more entertaining way then my engineering classes did. Understanding the design process allows you to create any number of robots that do what you want them to do and this is an invaluable life skill. That is what this book teaches you. It allows you to try to come up with the solutions on your own, or build the solutions the author came up with. My son and I plan on going through the book a second time and using the processes taught come up with our own solutions. This book is definitely worth having.

I read this book and Couchman's Oracle 8 DBA Certification Guide (from Oracle Press). The Exam Cram book did a great job covering the bases needed for the Oracle networking exam. It is very concise and to the point. If you ignore the number of silly typos, the book attacked the topics very well from examination point of view. I think it was a very poor proofreading effort!
I gave a 5 star because the topics are laid out well and details are to the point.

This book contains everything you'll need to pass the Oracle8 Network Administration. It has the good standard Exam Cram format, but it contains more info than the usual Crams do. It's more like a study guide than a study guide companion, without repeating the classic mistake of being too wordy. This is one of my favorite Exam Crams.

Very good book, started from basic knowledge of net8 to advanced options.

Nice to have before you take the DBA Net exam.

This book has very useful tips and is excellent exam guide. Highly recommended.

I bought this book as a complement to Couchman's Oracle 8i DBA Certification Guide (from Oracle Press), because the latter's networking coverage was clearly a rushed effort. The Exam Cram book does an admirable job covering the bases needed for the Oracle networking exam. In general, the material is explained well and concisely. Overall the test questions in the book matched the breadth of those on the real test. There are a couple of notable exceptions. My test had FOUR "fill in the blank with the name of the parameter or view" questions. (Giving V$SHARED_SERVERS instead of V$SHARED_SERVER is wrong). There are no questions of this type in the book. Additionally, the actual test generally asked more demanding questions regarding CMAN and MTS than are in this book (in my opinion).

If you're taking the 8i exam, be sure to look over the Oracle docs on load balancing, which is not fully covered in this volume (which is designated for 8).

This book loses a star due to the sheer volume of silly typos and cut-and-paste errors. A look at Coriolis's errata page (on their web site) for this book reveals over 50 reported errors. I found many more, about one every other page. And on the web site errata page the utility "lsnrctl" is spelled, in multiple places, as "1snrct1" (digit 1 instead of letter l)! Doesn't anyone proofread this stuff? (The author works at the Washington Post!)

This in-depth look into transaction processing provides a wonderful place to start when considering implementation in your application(s). Cover-to-cover, this is an EXTREMELY easy read and doesn't try to be "fancy" or use complicated wording as many other books on the topic do.

Before reading any other transaction books or jumping into API document, this is a MUST MUST MUST MUST read. When developing an application that has transaction support, this is wonderful as a reference in order to include data in presentations, summaries, position papers, internal documentation, etc.

No only will this benefit a general developer, but also benefit people not in the development environment. This allows for clarification of communication between departments without going into API-specific implementation details.

This book is excelent for who want to deep his knowledge in TP. Is very practical with many examples and tips. Funthermore include examples of of transacctions for commercials TP like a MTS (COM + today), Tuxedo, CICS, etc.
Is a book very very recommendable.
bye.

The title of this review is a quote from the book and it summarizes it very nicely. Indeed, the book provides a great deal of information in such a small volume, but many of the things that would have been nice to have are missing and many are just skimmed over.

The best chapters of the book explain in very simple words the principles of transaction logging (along with recovery from a failure), two-phase locking and two-phase commit.

The chapter on transactional communications is not as thorough as the just mentioned ones and pays most attention to transactional message queueing rather than synchronous RPC and peer-to-peer. On top of that, message queues are just transactional, period. No attention is paid to the message queues specifics.

The chapter on transaction processing monitors considers only the three-tier environment with presentation, workflow and transaction tiers.

Other problems ?

The whole chapter with an overview of the existing transaction processing software was useless. You see, product Foo has features A and B, and product Bar has features C and D, so what ? As you read it, certain architecture similarities show through, but it's up to you to analyze it, the book gives no cross-product comparison, no analysis, just a list of acronyms.

Samples in Cobol (duh !) or tangled C-like code. The pictures are less than perfect.

But the biggest problem to me was certainly the lack of real-life information. Specifically, I would better be interested in interaction between transactional and non-transactional systems. An acknowledgement of databases and message queues being the only transactional systems (or not) and the implications of that. Two-phase commit in heterogeneous environment. And so on.

A great introductory book.

Transaction processing is a daunting topic, and this is one of the few books that provides the basics in a clear, understandable manner without overwhelming the reader. Most of the book is focused solely on transaction processing, but it touches on queuing as well, which makes it the ideal first book for anyone who is seeking details that extend beyond pure TP.

I like the way that the authors use real products to reinforce key points made throughout the book. While some of the products are no longer mainstream (indeed, some were never mainstream), the fact that real world implementations are used makes the information realistic. If you are using CICS, MQSeries, Tuxedo or similar products this book will have even more value. I also like the way difficult topics, such as locking, high availability and database recovery are given entire chapters because these topics need to be thoroughly understood in order to completely understand transaction processing.

After reading this book you will be armed with sufficient knowledge to make intelligent choices in selecting the right approach for transaction processing in a system design, or to understand the nuts and bolts of any TPM that you are supporting. I also agree with Cem Kaner's earlier comments that this book is an ideal resource for software test professionals who need to understand the entire environment that they will be testing. If you want to go deeper into TP, I recommend "Transactional Information Systems: Theory, Algorithms, and the Practice of Concurrency Control" by Gerhard Weikum and Gottfried Vossen, which drills much further down into the details of both transaction processing and queuing systems.

This book was written in 1997 which is often considered ancient in "Internet-years" but it is still very relevant because it focuses on fundamental principles of transaction processing (TP) rather than the latest whiz-bang technologies that optimize TP.

For those of you who aren't TP experts, a transaction is a computer operation that meets the ACID test. ACID here stands for:

Atomic - the steps that comprise transaction succeed or fail as one, there is no partial success.

Consistent - the internal data structures of the system(s) remain consistent with business rules.

Isolated - the data read or manipulated by the transaction is not altered during the duration of the transaction's execution.

Durable - the results of the transaction are persisted

Why does this matter to the system user or stakeholder? The canonical example is that of the ATM machine (or the "handy bank" if you're Australian). When you withdrawl money from an ATM, it has to go out and validate you have enough funds to meet the withdrawl, reserve those funds, and dispense cash - all within the same transaction. If the ATM failed after your bank account had been debited but before you'd gotten your money, you'd be very upset; conversely if the cash was dispensed but the debit procedure failed, the bank would be very upset. Ted provides very amusing analogy for this using a wedding ceremony but you can read that in his book.

There's a whole lot more to transaction processing beyond ACID and the ATM example, including two-phase commit (TPC), high-availability, massive concurrency, and crash recovery. To find out about all of these topics, read the book. One thing to remember though is that most application developers will never have to deal with the extremely complex details of providing a working and robust transaction management implementation, but like any technology it's important to understand the technology's fundamental principles and mechanics to effectively use it.

The book itself is extremely dense. The content of the book is "only" 324 pages long but covers a large amount of ground in a good amount of detail. Definitely read in a quiet place free of interruptions with a strong cup of coffee.

One shortcoming of the book is that it was written in 1997 so it doesn't cover TP implementations in Java (e.g. JTA, EJBs, etc.) but it was nice to finally find out what the heck IBM's CICS and IMS products are.

Interestingly enough, I have never had to deal with complex transaction processing (i.e. two-phase commit) in my short IBM career. This is probably because I've worked on business-to-consumer (B2C) applications where only one data source is involved rather than a business-to-business system where multiple data sources are involved. I'll have to ask the B2B guys if they get heavy into two-phase commit or if it's not an issue.

The reason I read this book is because I've always been a bit mystified by Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). When I joined IBM, I knew the word, but I was not familiar with such topics as object-relational persistence, object remoting, and transaction processing, so to me EJBs were simply things that took four classes/interfaces to do what I could do in one simple POJO. Ted Neward, in a very interesting web interview on the Serverside.com mentioned that he used to think EJBs were completely worthless, but during the process of writing Effective Enterprise Java came to realize that they were not worthless but rather over-marketed. He said that they should have been called Transactional JavaBeans rather than Enterprise JavaBeans because transactions are what EJBs did very well. So, hearing this from Ted I decided to read a book on fundamentals of transaction processing, so that I could understand EJBs better. Now that I've read all about TP principles, I pick Richard Monson-Haefel's book again, and all of a sudden EJBs start to make a lot more sense.

I finally picked up this book last year and throughoughly enjoyed it. I keep referring to it because the examples build up to the point of qualified proof of concept. The examples also are different enough from the other ones that are easy to find with Google, so between the two you get a complete view of the vulnerable issue.

The book's title should be obvious enough; this is NOT a book of defenses. However, if you understand these attacks you will be better equiped to deal with them when they happen. This book is no replacement for hands-on training in person with a qualified instructor such as at the SANS Institute, but it is an excellent supplement.

Its a great place to start...and works its way through some pretty indepth concepts. The great part is that for the beginner it is step by step....and they tell you were to download everything you will need. Anyways loved it, read it twice.

I have been around the software industry now for almost 20 years and every now and then I find a book where I learn exciting things, this is one of those books. It reminds me of the early days of low level Windows programming but with very up to date information on the OS and how to apply it. The book is obviously designed to attract hackers - both black and white hats - however it does do a good job diving on the internals of the Posix and Windows subsystems. If you like low level stuff this book is for you.

Not an easy read if you're not already familiar with programming and operating system concepts, but then if you are an IT security professional you'd better be, and the book explains why.

I read Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel last year, but waited until I read Joseph Kong's Designing BSD Rootkits before reviewing both books. In a head-to-head comparison, I thought Kong's book was easier to comprehend and directly covered the key techniques I wanted to see. If I could give this book 4 1/2 stars I would, but Amazon doesn't allow that luxury.

Hoglund and Butler should be commended for writing this book. It really does assemble the parts (meaning techniques and code) necessary to implement a Windows rootkit, at least prior to Windows Vista. My only concern is that, at times, the authors are not as clear as I hoped they might be. This is probably due to the fact that they are two of the best rootkit writers on the planet, so they probably do not remember what it was like to not understand "hooking" and other techniques.

In some ways Rootkits is probably a book best suited for other experts (like many who wrote reviews here). That leaves beginners (like myself) wishing for a little more foundation or direct language prior to reading about implementation tricks.

One of the greatest strengths of this book, however, is the degree to which it exposes the internal workings of Windows. For greatest effect it's probably worth reading Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition by Russinovich and Solomon first.

Note that although I found the direct approach of the BSD rootkits book better for my learning style, this book by Hoglund and Butler is deeper in several areas. In fact, those who liked the BSD rootkits book would do well to read its Windows counterpart to learn tricks from Hoglund and Butler.

Very good, for older version of Access. Probably mostly useful even for newer versions, AFAIK.

This by far the best set of books for Access. Nothing even comes close (and I've reviewed many). My only complaint is that the bindings are not very good - maybe due to the fact that I've used these books so much over the years. I emailed the developers to ask for an updated version, but it appears that the publisher is not interested. Please write an update!

Jesus christ, i can't think of how many times i've referred to this book over the years, and i don't think i've even covered 1/3rd of the material. If you're a self-taught access programmer, you can only get so much from google searches and developers' forums. If you want to learn new concepts in depth and generate ideas for how to be a more effective programmer, i can't think of anything more helpful than reading this book one chapter at a time. For example, I wanted to learn about ADO, so I read the chapter on ADO. Without any specific goals, I read the chapter about forms and learned to substantially increase the user-friendliness of my forms. In general, this has made me a better "modular" program, and I think in terms of re-usable functions rather than task-by-task code.

Getz' writing style is remarkably lucid, and there's an example in writing and on CD for just about every concept he teaches.

i bought the paperback version and now that the binding has come apart i keep the book in about five or six different places. i also broke the straps on both of my south american backpacks trying to carry this book (each volume is about 1500 pages long...) If you're going to be programming Access for a while, i'd recommend getting a hardcover edition.

If you need to know anything about access 2002 this book has it! i use it all the time

What do I mean by the "gold standard?" As a professional Access developer, I use a lot of reference materials. Besides the Internet, my bookshelf is full of Acces, SQL Server, VBA, T-SQL, and Office reference books. But there is one publication that I always check first when I'm perplexed or curious. It's my gold standard if you will allow me that hyperbole. I'm speaking of the Access 2002 Developer's Handbook, published by Sybex.

Versions of the Access Developer's Handbook have been a staple of professional Access developers since the early days of the Microsoft Access product. My first attempt at serious Access development was during the days of version 1.1. Was that 1993? My team and I recognized the importance and power of this new Windows database product and started to build marketing applications using Access and macros(!) in Windows for Workgroups 3.11. I discovered a copy of the Access 2.0 Developer's Handbook as we migrated to Access v2 and I never looked back. I could not believe the wealth of information in that single volume. I didn't understand much of it, but that was the beauty of it. Here was a reference that revealed secrets and held promises of knowledge to be gained for the inspired reader. Incarnations of this book have remained at my right hand since the first day I opened it.

Whether you need to know more about tables, queries, forms, reports, collections, SQL, relational design, Jet security, multi-user issues, networked databases, or whatever, the Access 2002 Developer's Handbook is the reference for you. It's currently published in two volumes, Desktop and Enterprise editions. Buy both as a set. Combined, they are the gold standard of Microsoft Access reference materials.

I am sure if you glance at the rest of the reviews you will be more than tempted to buy this book. Well, you should! Kerman's way of introducing the LOGIC behind actionScript is phenomenal. This books should help pave the way for you to grasp the logic behind actionScript. Why not 5 stars then? Well, I thought there would be more practical examples than the book included. Definitely worth the money!

I'm sorry I bought this book!
Because it's so good!
And now the MX version is out,
but I already have the Flash 5 one!
Anybody wants to buy it off me,
so I can get the new issue?
;-)

If you're looking for a book with lots of pictures and fluff this is not the book for you.
But if you're actually interested in learning to program ActionScript this is the first and only book you should buy.

Phillip Kerman explains everything in a clear understandable way and approaches the ideas of good programming as opposed to bad as well as the actual language itself. This alone will save you hours of re-doing what you've already done. Phillip gets you thinking like a programmer (a fairly new concept to a lot of designers trying to make their Flash more interactive.) Learn to design completely independent re-usable interfaces so that not only are you developing advanced interactive web-applications, you're also building a library of sample re-usable building blocks that you can re-use over and over.

Even if you're new to the language, take some tutorials online to get the basics and then buy this book. Read it and do the tutorials in it and soon you will be programming like a professional in no time. This is the best book on ActionScripting period! and I own 16 books on Flash Development!

This is the first book I've read by Phillip Kerman. I will now go hunt for his next one - or all of them, to be honest! This book doesn't learn You any Flash or design, but it gives You everything You need to know about actionscripting. Tastefully presented and easy to read. If You are the perfect object oriented programmer - You could skip some chapters, but if You're just an "almost" perfect programer in object oriented languages - this book will give You the last skills that makes You perfect! Yes it really does not only cover actionscripting - it gives You a visual and very educational lesson in object oriented programing.

Wow!

This is a GREAT book for the graphic/web designer wanting to learn actionscript. I own or have read many others that don't cover the basics or the thought processes behind writing in a scripting language. Most books on this topic started out over my head with little explaination and were accompanied by buggy and/or old code. With clear and consice writing, Philip uses the first half of the book to fully explain programming concepts as they pertain to scripting in Flash, and then follows up with examples of how to implement these ideas.

I can't say enough about how far this book has taken me into the scripting world. Kudos to Kerman.

This book is not only good for project managers but also an excellent read for developers. In the real world it is not uncommon that developers would confront a manager who likes to micromanage and everything the developers do have to be conform to something really bureaucracy and with little or no business sense or tech sense. In this book, the value of APM is well articulated in concise sentences. These sentences can be powerful tool when it is necessary for R&D people to discuss/argue with a manager about things like project plan/report, etc. There is also practical method of APM. I find this book very articulate and concise. Highly recommended.

This book is a thoroughly enjoyable read, from the emphasis on principles, the excellent job navigating the difficult territory of the line between prescribed process and anarchy, and the stages a team goes through as it embraces an agile style of development. I even thought that the hypothetical story added a nice element of repetition to each section that helped drive home the main points.

The one thing I would've liked was for this book to get off the fence and decide to be software-related. Almost every example is software related (except for the basketball analogy that got beaten to death...), but it goes out of the way not to specify software practices because this is about arbitrary project management. The book's in the "Agile Software Development Series" and the author is primarily a software consultant. I'd prefer it stuck to software rather than trying to go for broader appeal because there were several practice areas where detail was elided on that basis and could've really helped make the practices more concrete.

Also, it would've been nice to have a little grid mapping up common-day software development methodologies like Scrum, XP, FDD, and DSDM against the practices in the book. I tried to do it in my head, but once you get past 5x5, it's something that should've been provided.

I picked up Agile Project Management because I haven't done any agile projects in a while and wanted to update my knowledge to help with an upcoming project. I found the book a good combination of theory and practical activities that a project manager can use in an agile project. The book steps through each of the processes, explains the theory, then steps through tools that can be used for that process. I recommend this book for anyone new to agile project management, including experienced project managers looking to expand their toolkit.

This book is well-written and provides both a good explanation of agile software development and insights into how to manage such a project. My disappointment comes from fact that Highsmith emphasizes that one has to find the right people in order to succeed with this kind of project, and doesn't provide much info about how to identify the right people or how to train people with potential to work this way. Given the emphasis on the importance of the right team, more space in the book should be devoted to that aspect of management.

As someone who has managed large custom software projects and programs for 20 years, I was concerned that applying Agile to project management would simply mean burndown charts and the like. What I found in Highsmith's book is a perceptive understanding of how people think, feel and actually work on projects. Approaches that take human behavior into account, in my experience, are far more successful than those that don't.

The concepts covered here, if really absorbed and understood, can benefit any project. I found Chapter 7 to be the most valuable for my current product development team, and ordered copies of the book for all my managers.

The book never arrived at 3 weeks, so canceled the order and hope the charge is reversed on my card. Woody's books was nice about the problem and sent me a $5 check to aid in buying the book at a higher cost in a local book store.

This is a fantastic book for the newly-diagnosed breast cancer patient. It was given to my by my surgeon's office. It does a great job explaining things on a level that the average person can understand. It also has great diagrams, lists of questions to ask your medical team, glossary of terms, websites to check out and comments from breast cancer survivors and/or significant others of survivors. I highly recommend this book.

I was introduced to this book at work and am now giving it to women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. I am on oncology certified nurse in the radiation oncology department of my cancer center. In January 2007 I also became our Breast Cancer Patient Navigator. I find this book gets excellent reviews from patients and their families alike. It is a great source of information, covering all the topics from diagnosis to living life 'after cancer'. I only wish I would have had this book when I was on my personal breast cancer journey! I highly recommend this book for someone newly diagnosed with breast cancer.

"Many experts believe that Herceptin represents the future direction of breast cancer drugs, because it targets a particular protein on the cancer cell, rather than attacking all cells at random. As research progresses, scientist hope to make all anti-cancer drugs as specific as possible." ~ pg. 97

Designed to compliment the book, the DVD provides an environment of understanding with explanations for all the procedures and various situations that will occur after a diagnosis. New treatments like Immunotherapy are discussed and there is an extensive resource section with additional CD options, including a CD-ROM program that is an interactive guide to treatment.

Helpful up-to-date information about why you may not need a mastectomy and only a lumpectomy is encouraging and gives hope. Radiation and Chemo is also discussed in detail. Throughout both the DVD and book, women tell their stories and that gives a sense of the range of experience. There are over 150 color photographs and graphics to illustrate important points.

A variety of questions are given in each section so you know what to ask your doctor. The stages of breast cancer are given so you know exactly what your doctor is talking about. The main sections include:

Facing Breast Cancer - Your feelings, support groups, healthcare teams and overview of treatment options.

Breast Cancer Basics - Types of Breast Cancer

Diagnosis and Staging - Tumor Testing, the Pathology Report, Additional Tests, How Stage is Determined

Surgery - Reconstruction, Lumpectomy and Mastectomy options, Lymph Nodes

Reconstruction - Choosing a Plastic Surgeon, External and Internal Options

Radiation Therapy - How treatment is given, Brachytherapy

Chemotherapy - Side Effects, Common Chemotherapy Drugs

Hormone Therapy - How Treatment is Given, Who should be Treated, Side Effects

Immunotherapy - Future Therapies and Herceptin

Clinical Trials - Participation Ideas and getting the newest treatments...

Life after Cancer - Emotional Recovery, Physical Recovery

The Guide for Your Partner is a special section your partner can read. If possible, watching the DVD together would be ideal because it explains all the basics in the book.

Be a Survivor is an excellent resource because it gives you all the questions you need to ask and answers a number of pertinent questions any woman will be asking the moment she is diagnosed.

Vladimir Lange, MD is one of the most respected doctors in this field of study and this book came into being after his own wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

~The Rebecca Review

I can also recommend "Reconstructing Natalie" by Laura Jensen Walker.

We give this book to surgeons in our area to distribute to women diagnosed with breast cancer. Before purchasing it, we had a group of 4 breast cancer survivors review and rate 3 separate books on breast cancer. This book "won" hands down, based on numerous criteria -- everything from its explanation of breast cancer treatments, to its index and glossary, to its discussion of life after cancer. It is clear and easy to read, provides comprehensive information on types of breast cancer and corresponding treatment alternatives, has wonderful graphics and photos, and provides interesting anecdotal stories of actual patients in its sidebar. Highly recommended!