Drivers Books

I found this book to be very informative and full of practical advice. Some reviewers freaked out about certain statements made in the book-but I personally didn't see anything wrong with his experienced viewpoint. Especially, the part about trusting your insticts and the breastfeeding advice. With my first child,I wish I had more confidence and could have stopped breastfeeding after I knew she was full (instead of sinking into depression after breastfeeding my colicky child nearly non-stop). He is right in line with what my muffled insticts said- and now say proudly. Overall, I felt this was a wonderful book.

It's nice to finally find a book with helpful advice that you can find easily. I found that when my children got sick or had a problem (usually in the middle of the night), I'd turn to the larger books "table of contents" and not find exactly what I was looking for, or shown 5 different places in the book to look and none of them for what I needed... Then came along Dr. Weinberg's book.. very basic, easy to find guidance. What a lifesaver for any new mom...
Note - Some of the advice he gives is not what doctors are suggesting any longer, but my feeling is common sense... that's what he advises!

This little book has such an adorable cover I've bought at least 10 for baby-shower gifts and just stuck on a big bow! They've always been a hit, especially with younger mothers who feel intimidated by those books with the endless charts of average heights and weights, etc. The contents are just as attractive as the cover, as Doctor Weinberg covers every topic about babies from how to feed them, dress them, toilet-train them, right thru the vaccinations and childhood sickness, into the teen-age years. There are great little bullet points with advice on almost every page, and every subject. I'm a dedicated mother and I found nothing to argue with. All in a book small enough to throw in a diaper bag and take to the park. This book will also appeal to people who may not have the inclination or habit of reading books at all. Every baby deserves informed parents, and this book is a worthy addition to anybody's library.

The author may be a pediatrician, but he is not obviously up to date on new information. Some of the advice he gives is not even advised nowadays.

First off, he starts his book by saying that mothers have depended too much on baby care books and not enough on their intution, and that whatever the parent feels is right for them and their baby, they should go ahead and do,but then the author goes on to tell parents and mothers how to raise their kids!

He gives so much outdated information that it's ridiculous.He advises breast-feeding mothers to only nurse 20 minutes at a time, 5 minutes per side and then says that if you nurse more than this, your baby is only using you as a pacifier and you shouldn't allow it! He goes on to say that formula feeding is fine if you just don't feel like it and that ANY formula will do and even gives a recipe for making your own! Pediatricians nowadays advise against this and say that it is dangerous to do.Then he advises using a pacifier "So the parents can have hours of peace and quiet"! That is not a good enough reason.If all you use it for is to get peace and quiet, why have a baby? Then he advises giving rice cereal to 3 week old baby's to help them sleep through the night, which many doctors tell you does NOT work and is also not safe because infants can't swallow solids very well, but he advises waiting to start solids at 6 months, BIG contridiction! Lastly, he says that you should put your baby to sleep on his side and not his back because he might choke to death on vomit! Again, they advise now to put them on their backs and not their sides and say there is no evidence that they will choke.

Well I agree that he is up to date on SOME information, like the chicken pox vaccine, he is way off on most of the other information.I advise new mothers to skip this book.There are many other books that are more up to date then this and even better suggest that you trust your instincts!. Nancy

This is a concise, well written and practical book, that Parents and Grandparents can use to get quick information on how to raise their child. Any family that does not have a grandparent or other older relative near by to help in the first few years, will benefit from having this book as an easy reference.

Carlotta Carlyle doesn't go by the book, which may explain her defection from the Boston Police Department and her subsequent jobs as a cab driver and private investigator. In this first novel of the series, she is approached by an elderly woman named Margaret Devers who is concerned about the disappearance of her brother Eugene. Carlotta takes on the case, but comes up with a lot of blind alleys in her search for the missing man. She returns to her job as a cab driver to do undercover work and introduces us to the dispatcher Gloria who shows a lot of potential as a supporting character, as well as her partner Sam, a former lover of Carlotta's, whose family is into organized crime. Another nice touch is the Big Sister--Little Sister relationship between Carlotta and a young school girl named Paolina. Before the dust settles, Carlotta is involved with the IRA and drug pushers, but she never loses her "moxie" or her sense of humor. This is a good series with lots of potential.

One does a disservice to an author/series if one reads book #3 or #4 or #5 and then goes back to read #1. Characters develop, relationships develop, and authors develop. I read this first Carlotta Carlyle book before I read the rest, and enjoyed it just fine. Yes, the following books get better as they go along, but you'll have missed out on several important relationship/character points if you don't read this one before you read the others.

Having read and enjoyed several of the later Carlotta Carlye books, I thought I'd check out this first book. As a first book goes, it's solid but not stunning. Carlotta and her supporting cast (crazy artist roomie, cab drivers, "little sister") are all interesting enough. The plot seems a bit contrived. The blues music interest doesn't quite ring true. It's as if the author was told to give your character and interesting hobby.

Bottom line -- Don't go out of your way to read this book but at the same time, don't let it put you off from later books in the series, some of which are great reads.

Author Linda Barnes wrote this first Carlotta Carlyle, Boston based female P.I. mystery, in 1987. It's a good start, which vaguely reminds me of the movie "Going In Style," where the old guys revert to bank robbery. Wait till you read where she stashes the cash!

If this book were a film, it would definitely be noir. I imagined everything in black and white throughout my quick gallop through these wonderful pages.

Having never read a Linda Barnes mystery before, I was enthralled by the gritty language, the down-and-dirty description of the Boston streets, the no-nonsense tone, and above all, the main character, PI Carlotta Carlyle.

Written in the mid 80s, this book is not outdated in the least. The plot concerns a group of Irish-American cabbies, all over 50, who may be running money and guns for the now-severly-restricted IRA. Accidentally stumbling into their activities while investigating a missing persons case, Carlotta finds herself in very deep trouble--the kind that can easily end in murder.

This is a perfect book to devour one lazy afternoon while shutting the rest of the world out. I loved it, and intend to sample more Linda Barnes mysteries from now on.

Good book with a lot of very entertaining chapters summarizing great moments of the "old days" of racing. Many of them are created around accidents, like the ones about first Paris-Madrid event, Le Mans 55 or the last Mille Miglia. But there're also other interesting parts. And anyway crashes were usually fatal on these days and were part of racing also.

Summarizing: a book I recommend to anyone who love that age of motor racing :)

Cars at Speed is very similar to one of Daly's other books, The Cruel Sport. Though it should be mentioned that Cars at Speed was initially published years before The Cruel Sport. The Cruel Sport had breathtaking pictures of Grand Prix racing from the era, with enough text to tell the story behind the pictures. Cars at Speed is all about the stories.

The stories are excellent and another great view into the world of motorsport. The focal period of the book is the 1950s and early 60s when the author lived in Europe covering the sport. Each chapter focuses on a particular track, with other stories included as Daly sees fit to include them. As in The Cruel Sport, Daly tells us that death was a big part of the sport, and the drivers knew it could happen, but dwelling on it wouldn't do them any good. Death is a major theme of this book, lots of drivers did die during this era as motor racing was nowhere near as safe as it is today.

While the focus was on the 1950s, I found the stories of the prewar era about the great Mercedes and Auto Unions of the 1930s some of the most fascinating. They way they came prepared to race as opposed to some of the smaller teams can't help but remind me of the current F1 situation of the larger teams with half billion dollar budgets and the smaller teams scraping by on fifty million. It goes to prove, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Inside this book I was hoping to discover a delightful account of sports car racing's early European history complete with descriptions and comparisons of these beautiful machines and the stories of their drivers. What I found was a "cocktail" racing fan's chauvinistic view whom knows nothing about racing or the engineering genius behind these machines, but is more than happy to talk about where he has been and experienced in a pseudo-sophisticated manner. Simply imagine a tabloid writer describing a race and you should understand this book. Every other paragraph centers on the death of drivers or spectators. This shallow attempt of "shock-value" writing defines his style.
This book did help me understand two things; how primitive European tracks were when compared to tracks in the US of the same era, and how racing in the US centered on fans while racing in Europe was reserved for the privileged. The icing on the cake for me was his hatred of American cars, fans, and tracks.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in motor racing, but becomes a superb read for anyone interested in F1, Le Mans, or Mille Miglia history. The stories are fast-moving and interesting.

An interesting read to be sure. Mr. Daley regulary interjects rather morbid thoughts and incidents. Yes, these things happened, but one is left with the feeling those participants of the era/period (1935-1960)were borderline psychotics with a death wish. This era surely was a difficult transitional and learning period for those involved which, in my humble opinion, this author's perspective is overly negative and a bit sarcastic.

I finally got around to purchasing this title after debating about it for a few years. Since I don't know a camshaft from a camcorder, I feared this book would be a history of chassis components and engines.

I was wrong.

Sort of.

The book was legitimately a history of shady tactics in the top NASCAR series from Race 1 where winner Glenn Dunnaway was disqualified through the 2001 Daytona 500 when almost everyone was illegal.

Unfortunately, almost 75% of the text seemed to be quotes with Jensen sporadically throwing in his two cents. That irks me when an "author" lets his interview subjects write the book with their quotes.

Anyway, the book deals heavily with the early innovators like Junior Johnson and Smokey Yunick. Both were rebellious in nature and their exploits are detailed as proof.

The 1983 Charlotte race with Richard Petty and his big engine is also brought up. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, NASCAR likes it when the fans go home knowing who the winner is and this was the case. Petty had an illegal engine, but Bill France, Jr. didn't wanna change the result so he only lost points and cash. This was the predecessor to today's idiocy, seen this year with Carl Edwards.

Another reason you will despise NASCAR a bit is when Jensen goes over Bill Elliott's 11-win 1985 campaign. According to Dan Elliott, who was a tire changer that season on the #9 Melling Ford, NASCAR had a meeting with the team and France told Bill to stop "stinking up the show."

Jensen paints a picture of the job of NASCAR inspector as a downhill battle, comparing their pay to peanuts and that of a team mechanic to living in the lap of luxury.

I enjoyed learning more about the inspection process but as a racing fan and not a gearhead, some of the lingo was foreign to me.

Carmageddon Rating: 3/5

I thought the book was fascinating, even though I know little about cars and even less about NASCAR. It details how drivers, mechanics, and/or team owners have either attempted to skirt the NASCAR rules or even thumbed their noses at NASCAR officials, all to get a slight competitive edge on the rest of the racing field, and the book spans from the humble beginnings of NASCAR to the present-day sports juggernaut that NASCAR has become. Jensen's writing style is such that even those who do not have a great understanding of automobile mechanics can visualize just what alterations are being made to the vehicles, and he is consistent in explaining clearly just what advantage those alterations might give the drivers. To see the book solely as a history of how NASCAR participants have attempted to get a couple of extra miles per hour, miles per gallon, or laps on a set of tires does not do the work justice, though. It is also a case-study in risk-taking behavior as the book's subjects can be seen and heard, in their own words, weighing the benefits of winning versus the consequences of getting caught playing outside the rules and existing in the political arena which governs both. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys competition.

If you have ever wondered how Nascar teams try to better the rest of the field then this book is for you. It looks at the form of cheating or "being creative" in order to be the best race car out there. It looks at the sport from 1949 all the way till 2002 and how the rules have to changed to conform to the ever creative teams and the way in which they would modify the cars so as to not break the rules but to get an advantage. The book goes through each year and states are the rules were bent by the crews, and then how nascar wrote the rule to create an equal playing field.

An example would be when fuel lines. In the 50's, they did not specify the length or diameter of the fuel lines. So one crew being as smart as they were, decided to use a very wide diameter to fit more gas into the tank. Nascar caught this and mandated a specific size of line to be used. This example is one of many types of rules that are broken that the book portrays and then shows how it is corrected.

The book is full of information. The author took two years to write it by gathering many interviews from drivers to owners. Some even confess their ways of cheating, while others think best to keep it to themselves.

This book is for any Nascar fan and non Nascar fan, as it provides a past and present view of how teams skirted or still jump out of the boundaries of Nascar Racing.

Tom Jensen authors this overdue look at the "black art" of cheating in NASCAR, and along the way manages a decent job of seperating fact from fiction. He delves into the acts of cheating in the sport from its beginnings (when apparant Grand National winner Glenn Dunaway was disqualified and the race win went to Jim Roper) through the 1990s into the 21st century.

Three cheating scandals stand out here, and all three involve teams owned by Junior Johnson. If there is a theme to this book, it is that Junior Johnson was the sport's most dishonest team owner. The first was the 1973 National 500 at Charlotte. Cale Yarborough won the race, but his car and second-place Richard Petty were protested by Bobby Allison. An extremely long tear-down took place, and NASCAR ultimately said the race results would stand - which led Allison to file a lawsuit against NASCAR, because there was evidence that Cale's Chevrolet, wrenched by Johnson, ran some 70 cubic inches more than allowed by the rules.

If there is an eye-opener in this book, it is the admission by Junior's engine builder at the time, Robert Yates, that that particular engine and others built for Junior were indeed illegal; Yates states it measured 500 CID, versus the 431 limit of the time. Actually, though, Yates' admission isn't a surprise, as former crew chief J.C. "Jake" Elder stated in several 1990s interviews that Junior's crew chief Herb Nab acknowledged to him that Junior usually ran illegal displacement in his engines.

The second involves the infamous "Pettygate" Charlotte race of 1983. Jensen doesn't delve into any new ground here, which is a shortfall, because there was more to that scandal than is usually acknowledged. Petty's team had won twice in 1983 but had struggled against Johnson and also the DiGard Racing team headed by Gary Nelson (and powered by Yates) in horsepower (Jensen deals at insufficient length with cheating by Gary Nelson with DiGard and other teams elsewhere in the book), and Maurice Petty built (and readily acknowledged after the race) a 381 CID engine. What is underappreciated is that Petty beat Junior's driver Darrell Waltrip - because Waltrip backed off in Turn Two and let Petty take a big lead. There was speculation then and later that Waltrip was also running more CID than allowed, and given Yates' and Herb Nab's admissions there is no reason not to believe that Waltrip usually ran illegal displacement.

It is a shame because it tarnishes the accomplishments of Waltrip (a great driver despite also being overrated as such) and also Cale Yarborough (a superior driver incapable of being overrated), who won the majority of his races (55 of 83 career wins) and all three of his titles in Johnson racecars. It also puts a period to NASCAR's long-running practice of being more nitpicky to certain teams over others (notably Johnson's), notably Petty Enterprises, Wood Brothers Racing, Ranier Racing, Bill Elliott's racing team, Hoss Ellington Racing (whose owner cheated mostly for fun and readily admitted such), and (somewhat ironic given how much success they enjoyed) DiGard Racing (one of the most revealing such episodes involved Bumpergate at Daytona in 1982; NASCAR made Gary Nelson lower the rear bumper on the DiGard car to increase drag; Nelson angrilly had it slapped on with insecure fasteners to fall off on the track; he denies that he had it deliberately slapped on to fall off during a race, but there is no reason to believe him); this nitpickery practice does continue today, though at a far less blatant level.

Another who got a lot more than his fair share of NASCAR nitpickery was Harry Hyde, whose cars won the 1970 title with Bobby Isaac and whose cars were regularly torn down more thoroughly than most, such as in the scandal-plagued '73 National 500; Hyde's car was torn down four times during the weekend and when NASCAR demanded another teardown, he refused and was disqualified. Hyde also got swept into the Nitrousgate scandal of 1976; after Daytona 500 qualifying his Dodge was found with a moveable flap on the radiator, which allowed air to flow more efficiently and increase aero slickness; the flap met the letter of NASCAR's rulebook but amid the discovery of speed-enhancing nitrous oxide bottles on several cars, NASCAR ruled it didn't meet the spirit.

Nitpickery shows in a recent area dealt with by Jensen - the "Tiregate" New Hampshire 300 of late August 1998. On final stops with some 73 laps to go Jeff Gordon took two tires to the four taken by Mark Martin, John Andretti, and others (this was when tires were much softer and wore more easily than in 2001-2, when Goodyear went with compounds of such hardness that wear became almost impossible); under such circumstances Gordon should have been swamped by cars with four fresh tires, but instead he outpulled the cars on four fresh tires and easily won a race he had not run all that competitively in throughout that day.

Jensen details the inaccuracy of claims by Jack Roush of chemical treatment of tires by Ray Evernham, but ignores that this was a red herring to begin with - the real issue being Goodyear playing favorites on tires, a practice angrilly noted a year later by team owner Andy Petree in a spat over lack of access to Goodyear tires for much-needed test sessions, and also briefly discussed by Geoff Bodine in Shaun Assael's superb NASCAR book "Wide Open: Days & Nights On The NASCAR Trail."

The third big scandal discussed in the book was Jimmy Spencer's two restrictor plate victories of 1994; once again, we have a cheating scandal involving Junior Johnson racecars. In fairness to Spencer, comments about his ability by Jeff Gordon's stepdad John Bickford (made in naturally fawning comparison to Gordon's ability) are a little out of line, as Spencer had shown superb drafting ability years earlier in Travis Carter's Chevrolet and showed it again in Dick Moroso's Grand National Ford, Travis Carter's Winston-sponsored Fords, and James Finch's Grand National Pontiacs.

Regardless, it should be clear that Spencer's two Winston Cup wins were achieved with an illegal restrictor plate manifold; that it could have escaped NASCAR pre-race inspection is not as difficult as Jensen implies at points, given the ingenuity of raceteams.

One area where Jensen could have set the record straight but does not even discuss is suspicion about the 1984 Firecracker 400. During "The Call" mini-controversy of 1995 there was some question about the legality of Richard Petty's 200th win, about how the engine supposedly was over the limit on displacement. There ought to be no question about the legality of that win or all but one or two other Petty wins, given how NASCAR scrutinized his cars more than most, how Petty did not show more horsepower than race favorite Cale Yarborough (Petty won on superior handling and the car's better drafting ability; Cale's Ranier Chevrolets of the time were noticably inferior in handling than Petty's Pontiacs or Bobby Allison's Buicks), and also how the Pettys had feuded with NASCAR's France family almost from the beginning, making claims of a "Call" going to him implausible. Jensen likewise should have noted that in the '73 controversy Petty readily admitted running a mixture of engine cylinders of varying displacements - a few over the legal limit, several well under it, for an average within the rules. As Bobby Allison himself noted during the Pettygate scandal, "Richard shoots straighter than most."

In all, though, the book is worth having for providing information on a "black art" in NASCAR racing. Jensen provides a look at the psychology of cheating when he notes Darrell Waltrip's infamous 1976 quip, "If you don't cheat, you look like an idiot; if you cheat and don't get caught, you look like a hero; if you cheat and get caught, you look like a dope."

The book over stated and recounted the same infractions over and over. Always comparing one modification to the one in the previous chapters.
It would have been nice if NASCAR would have let the author maybe list a chapter from modification that teams have tried to get pst NASCAR and didnt. Plus the fines.

My dad's book deals with an honest cop who fought a corrupt sheriff named David Harder.

I thought the book was fairly well written and was impressed with dad's honesty as he discussed his emotional journey through some very difficult times as this corrput sheriff destroyed his career.

I found his story to be inspirational and spiritually enlightening.

The book can be broken down into two parts: The first, discussed the authors upbringing and his steadfast determination to become a cop. The second, describes in detail, and with brutal honesty, of his rise and fall within his department, and of the corrupt sheriff who destroyed his career. It's extremely rare when a law enforcement officer speaks so openly about his feelings and I was impressed with his honesty. It's unfortunate that there are chiefs and sheriffs out there who are so incompetent, yet have the power to destroy such a promising career. I thought the book was extremely interesting.

Raymond Schaffer's book describes, in great detail, of his battle with corrupt cops and politicians. As head of a police academy that serviced forty police agencies in seven counties he describes how three of the local police chiefs conspired with a newly elected sheriff, who was a mere puppet to the polititians, to destroy his career because of his refusal to succomb to their corrupt and childish whims.

I read in astonishment as he talked openly about his deep seated hatred toward those who were relentless in their attack on him and how he was forced to the brink of a mental breakdown because of the abuse. It was a difficult book to put down.

An apt title for a book written by someone so familiar with the gutter.
Take a trip through the politics of a small county's political underground with a bitter man consumed with hatred and vengeance as your guide. Follow him as he attempts ot justify his position in the Broome County (NY) Sheriff's Department and play the victim as he reaps the consequences of his own poor choices.
Having become familiar with the entire set of circumstances from the luxury of an being an outsider, and having known the author for more than 18 years as well as the other players in this tale, it has become evident that his masterpiece will go down in the literary world right beside the works of Ted Kaczynski and Jason Klebold.

Raymond Schaffer's autobiographical book is the story of an honest cop who refused to play along with the politically corrupt game in the Broome County, New York sheriff's department ruled (as the author describes him) by a cruel, vindictive and buffoonish sheriff named David Harder. At 554 pages it is a long read, and the real story of Schaffer's journey into agency hell doesn't begin until 200 or so pages in.

By then, whether you've read every word or skimmed some of the minutiae I personally would have edited out, you will know Ray Schaffer very, very well. He examines himself with unflinching, even brutal, honesty. His is a journey into the underworld of police and political incompetence. Following the election of a sheriff whose opponent he had supported, he found himself in a department run by incompetent and none-too-bright leaders driven by narcissism and peopled with underlings most of whom are a**-kissing slugs.

The author also describes a journey of self-discovery that took him to the brink of a mental breakdown only prevented by timely psychotherapy. 

In the first half of the book writing is amateurish but not off-putting. But once Schaffer begins to describe his war against the sheriff and his minions a writing transformation takes place. There is a passion and urgency in his prose that the first third of the book lacks. With considerable insight and courage, he describes his thoughts, emotions and even his violent retribution fantasies.  

Readers unfamiliar with just how rotten a law enforcement agency can become may not believe that such a thing is possible. His story will seem like the rambling of the delusional Alice who falls asleep and dreamed herself in Wonderland ruled by the insane Queen of Hearts. When the Queen commands "off with their heads," no real blood is shed.
 
The insular worlds of these few law enforcement agencies is all too real. Their monarchs can decide to ruin the lives of their subordinates. I can attest, from my work as a police stress therapist helping honest cops cope with morally bankrupt departments, that while these agencies are thankfully a small minority, they do exist.

When Shaffer's enemies pull out all the stops to destroy his career, and truly wallow in the most appalling of gutter tactics to break him down him emotionally and spiritually, the book is hard to put down.

The subject matter sounded wonderful, and I was hooked for awhile. However, I was a bit disappointed that most of the book was dedicated to the bureaucratic dealings of the various services,the countries they were supporting, and the various armies they were attached to. I had been hoping for more information about actual patient care and how the ambulance services impacted that. There was a huge amount of detail on the vehicles used as ambulances. The discussion about the public view of the ambulance service as well as joining the war was good.

The subject matter sounded wonderful, and I was hooked for awhile. However, I was a bit disappointed that most of the book was dedicated to the bureaucratic dealings of the various services,the countries they were supporting, and the various armies they were attached to. I had been hoping for more information about actual patient care and how the ambulance services impacted that. There was a huge amount of detail on the vehicles used as ambulances. The discussion about the public view of the ambulance service as well as joining the war was good.

I happened upon this book while doing internet research on my great-greand uncle, Richard Norton. Having very little idea of the depth of his involvement with the ambulance corps during WWI, I was much surprised to stumble upon this book, and more pleasantly surprised to find myself reading about other things that previously held no interest for me. The lives of the drivers, the founding of the ambulance corps, even the care of the cars is all covered in a way that drew me in and kept me turning the pages. A pleasant surprise, and a book I'm proud to add to my collection.

This is the first work on the volunteer services(ambulance) since the 1920's, that has explained this very complex story. The early days of organization to the days when the federal government took over the role of direction. The little known "attached" service and the names of many of America's literary people. It is unfair to list Hemingway as the book deals with volunteers in the ambulance service and Hemingway was with the Italian service. This work does not detail that front. Of note is the fact that the Norton-Harjes and American Volunteer Ambulance Service is covered. There is no other source for this information.

This book covers the history of Holman Moody nicely. I noticed a few errors, but the overall story and photo's are excellent. I thought I knew quite a bit about Holman Moody, but this book really opened my eyes to their accomplishments and history. I am very pleased with my purchase.

A very nice coffee table type book. Loads of information and pictures.

Overall the book has nice design, photos, and production but is sorely lacking in proof reading and editing. There are numerous and repeated examples of incorrect spellings. Some examples: Ford Galaxie is incorrectly spelled in book as "Galaxy" and driver Rodger Ward's name spelled "Roger." The authors were either sloppy or the proof reading nonexistent. It makes you wonder about the accuracy of other data.

Although the book chronicles the lives of one of the great car building and racing teams, it leaves out an integral part of the story. The author states, " I've purposely decided to steer clear of the politics and disagreements that occurred between John (Holman) and Ralph (Moody)." The author talks about all of the people who asked him to "concentrate on the positive."

Can you imagine if every book was written this way? Although one learns alot about their relationship with Ford and the drivers, what's missing is the details of what made Holman & Moody such an intersting and dynamic combination.

For $40, one would expect the whole story.

Modelo is an excelent novel that satarts slowly seducing you, but towards the end, you are completley blown away by the passion between an elderly virgin and a young taxi driver. A great way to see through the eyes of love a very particular Mexico City.

I chose to read this novel because I'm a vintage car fan... but ended up being a mexico city fan, too.

The most interesting thing about this book is the way a romance that seems impossible at first, ends up being the only possible answer, in an impossibly crazy city.

Read it!

This is one of my favorite books. The story begins with an older woman about 74, who who wants a driver to ride her around the city in which she has lived her life, as she feels that she is about to die. The cab driver who accepts this position is a sometimes crude, rude, and nefarious young man of about 25. Modelo Antiguo is synonomous for the old woman who is still a virgin, and her car in which they drive. As the two proceed around the city the life of the woman is tenderly, poignantely, and sometimes comically revealed, as is the character of the young man. The beauty of this book is the love that transpires as these two unlikely souls meet and are transformed. Defying boundaries of class, age, and time, in an intricate weave of past and present, this is a beautiful, believable, love story.

I was very disappointed in this book for many reasons not the least of which is that this novel is about a couple IN Mexico City, but the book is not ABOUT Mexico City. I bought this book mainly because of the title an the blurb by Benjamin Alire Saenz on the cover stating that this book "brings English readers a real taste of Mexico City streets." I have been collecting fiction and nonfiction about Mexico City for over twenty-five years, and this book is not a keeper !

This book does exactly what it says, it provides a practical, sample-oriented introduction to developing drivers the Microsoft Windows Driver Foundation way.

The driver code for the samples used in the book, tools needed for developing drivers, and reference documentation are all downloadable (all 2.5GB of it, but it's free) from Microsoft. If you're like me and spend only a small part of your time working on drivers (I'm trying to interface a USB gadget), this is a great guide to WDF as well as to Windows I/O techniques and interface best practices. To get started, you can just hack the samples provided, as the authors intend. WDF looks after plug-n-play and power management, so it makes it easy to develop a basic user-mode USB driver like mine.

If you're a driver specialist, are writing kernel drivers, or have drivers to port from a different operating system, then the book is a detailed reference for moving to WDF. There's a lot of abstraction in the Windows way of doing drivers, and understanding the abstractions helps you write and debug your driver, so this book does a comprehensive job of explaining the relevant abstractions as you go along.

For example, if you're already an expert in the COM programming model, so that it's obvious to you why you need to implement the IUnknown methods, then you can likely skip most of Chapter 18. For the rest of us, we need the how-to advice and the examples, so there's a good reason the book is close to 900 pages :).

This book may very well describe writing WDF drivers, but it is not necessarily a useful book. It is not the Windows equivalent of the one Writing Linux Device Drivers book, and even that book is only just so useful. First: User-mode drivers are described, but what good are they? They can't do a _lot_ of things, and they are source-code incompatible with kernel-mode drivers. Second: In the book's Forward, a Microsoft "Architect" mentions that 3rd party driver developers find the pre-WDF Windows driver model "complex and difficult to use". Unfortunately neither WDF nor this book has helped me debug real world issues involving Cardbus, inf/driver install failures, and NDIS API failures. Microsoft did _not_ address/document/fix the known "complex and difficult to use" problem.

The content of the book feels more accessible than the online WDK documentation. It does cover the material, but each chapter is divided into three parts: stuff common between the kernel driver framework and user mode driver framework, stuff about the kernel driver framework, and stuff about the user mode driver framework. The authors probably had a hard time organizing the material, but the book should have been structured into those three parts. For example, I'm not currently interested in developing a user mode driver and I found the user mode driver material distracting.

This book is more reference than how-to. Maybe the authors should have structured the book like some of the Linux driver books: develop a real device driver.

I am a big serial killer buff and have a fairly large collection of books and videos about mass murderers. This is easily one of the best I've ever read:it places you inside Bianchi's warped mind and discusses possibilities for why Bianchi killed. Ranks up there with The Only Living Witness, Buried Dreams, Confessions of Son of Sam, and Silent Rage.

This book was written before the police psychologists realizedthat Ken Bianchi was faking multiple personality disorder. For the real story of the Hillside Stranglers (there were two of them, Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono), read Darcy O'Brian's "Two of a Kind: the Hillside Stranglers" instead.

Firstly, there is a new paperback version of this book, which I have been very impressed with, good quality and nice cover. (Get that one!) Now to review: This guy HAS done his homework, has NOT been "duped" and was in fact on an E! special all about the Hillside Strangler. This is an excellent book about Ken Bianchi, and regarding the so called "faking" Schwarz explained that Bianchi could indeed have been a multiple when first arrested, but throughout all the interviews, multiple psychological testing, it was likely that these multiple personalities became self-aware.