SSI Books

To put it in short- the best Trekkie encyclopedia there is.

I just love those biographies on important characters.

Before I lost this, I was constantly using this as a point of reference for the time line of things and to make sure I wasn't mispelling certain things.. getting other things right, what was where, what all kinds of Star ship classes there wear, etc... this was all for a fan fiction novel that I was, am.. writing. Good thing I put some of those things I was always looking at.. on paper.. so I didn't have to lug the book around everywhere I went.

Granted it's lacking the last few seasons of Voyager and the whole of Enterprise, but I thank Okura for even making "an" edition of these, though it would be nice for a new one.

This is a great book, with one rather glaring error. Under the SETI entry, there is a picture of Pioneer's plaque. On the plaque, the Pioneer appears to be launched from the second planet from the sun. As we all know, the probe was launched from the third planet, Earth.

If you consider yourself a Trekkie or just someone who is truely intersted in Star Trek this Encyclopedia is a must buy period.It has insight to every facet of the Series.From the Original to Voyager you'll know details to everything.You'll won't be able to just glance through it once.I consider myself a huge Trekkie and like to think I know alot about the Shows,but I'll find myself amazed when I discover details about a certain charecter of Episodes I've forgotten or never knew exsisted.Especially interesting is the Timeline parts of the book,The breakdowns of Ship commisions and Designs,information about Actors,Cuisine,backstories of Charecters.You name it and they have everything about it...well almost everything.

You have to realize this fact before buying this Encyclopedia is that it was made in 1999.It's been 9 Years.Alot of History has happened in Star Trek since then and if you don't realize this now,you'll be disapointed to discover that to information about Deep Space Nine's last Season,the last 2 Seasons of Voyager,The whole of Enterprise and Star Trek Nemesis.All of this information is non-exsistant.And just imagine the frustration of people who actually owned this book through the years and reread it wishing it had all this wealth of new information.I honestly can't comprehend why Pocket Books would not release the Book with all of this missing information availible.Or make a CD-Rom of it.

This might sound like I'm ragging on the Book,but that would be impossible to do.Wiether or not this info is in this paticular Book doesn't really matter,because it extensively covers in scrutinizing detail of all the Series up to Deep Space Nine Last Season,Voyager's last 2 Seasons,the whole of Enterprise and Star Trek Nemesis.And believe me you'll be more than satisfied with that alone.

So,most definately buy this now and enjoy it and you will.But just realize it's outdated and once you do that then you can truely enjoy this Encyclopedia the way the Publisher intended you enjoy it:with wonderment and fun.

I bought this book in 2003, and it covered most of the bases then, but only the movies through 1998 ("Insurrection" IIRC; "Nemesis" is not covered.), and the 5th season of Voyager. It just covered the last season of DS9. And of course it has none of the "Enterprise" series.

There have also been events such as the Paramount auction of all the series and movie paraphernalia since then, and that could be a chapter all by itself.

I came on Amazon today expecting to see a new and updated version for sale, and was disappointed that the old edition is still all that's available.

Michael and Denise Okuda know everything there is to know about ST, and are the perfect people to update this. If I were shopping today for the first time I would say wait for the new edition, but buy a used paperback 1999 just to see what it's all about.

Keeping my fingers crossed that someone sees the demand for an updated version!

Surprisingly good read, face-paced, well-written. I read the whole thing in one sitting. Hope this author produces a sequel.

The best (scariest) part of this novel is that it's now "far fetched" like most stuff in this genre. Cockfield uses actual science and the real world to create a scenario that really REALLY hits home as you read it.

This is not a book for people who want to escape into a fantasy world. It's fiction, but not. I highly reccomend it to anyone who's either into Michael Creighton or the Left Behind series of books. It has elements of both. A good read, worth getting.

I would play this for my son night after night when he was 5 and 6 and neither one of us tired of it.

Ms Kahn is just exquisite. And, the music is quite fetching.

My sons, 5 & 2.5 love the games on this CD-ROM. They play on our IMac and listen to the story, narrated by Madaline Kahn! I highly recommend this for children between 2.5 & 6.

Part of an action/adventure trilogy, Ian Feldman's Rendezvous In Majorca is a novel of spies, suspense, and nuclear technology, drawn heavily from the author's background as an officer in the US Army, and his English Grandmother's tales as a double agent for Scotland Yard. In Rendezvous In Majorca, competing CIA and Communist covert teams wrestle with one another and their potentially world-destroying secrets, and no price may be too high to pay given the potential amount of power on the line. Written with needle-sharp intensity, Rendezvous In Majorca is rich with excitement and taunt intensity from cover to cover.

Editorial Note: This is the second in Ian Feldman's trilogy of "Thermonuclear Intrigue" evolving from WWII to the current state of world affairs following the Cold War. The first is The Sky Club and the third is Har Megiddon.

This period based fictional spy and suspense thriller should come at the top of your reading list.

In order not to spoil your enjoyment of the extremely well crafted and detailed plot, here's a very brief and simplified taster.

The story starts when an officer in the British Military Intelligence embarks on a voyage to unravel a deep secret that had remained buried for almost three decades - going back to World War II, and the ensuing Cold War.

The central characters, Trixey Haygood and Deeke Horst, were inseparably linked to that secret.

Trixey had been entangled in the German spy network during World War II. Almost losing her life in the UK as a Nazi, she was saved by Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a "secret asset."

After World War II, Trixey had planned to write her diary; and to enjoy peace and tranquillity in Majorca. Her desires were rather short lived.

Two ex-Nazi scientists connected to the secret, a most dangerous Nazi "underground facility" in a Soviet controlled zone in East Germany, were on the run.

(Previously, the facility had been headed by Deeke Horst who, having alerted the then PM Churchill about the danger, had been classified as a "most secret" asset.)

Post WWII, the "secret assets" (Trixey and Deeke) were "activated" by the former PM Churchill in clandestine operations to secure the two scientists and the facility.

Hot on their heels followed the Soviet KGB, the British MI6 and the American CIA who were all aware of the awesome political and military implications.

Secret and double agents pursued their risky and covert adventures across many frontiers. The stakes were very high: their very lives, the balance of power and indeed the future of the world.

A cocktail of diverse and believable characters - with their emotions, uninhibited passions, personal and political motives, fears, tragedies, bravery, etc. - come to life as the thriller unfolds. After the first few chapters, you are totally hooked - and you have to keep turning the pages.

By the time you have read each and every page (572 pages including Epilogs), and uncovered the chilling picture, you come to this conclusion: Ian Feldman is a master of intricate detail - and a first class storyteller who knows how to hold you spellbound.

(...)

The Sky Club by Ian Feldman is a deftly written thrilling. This is a grippingly suspenseful novel about a retiring British spy who learns of a devastating secret of fifty years -- that Allied commandos had not stopped the creation of a German nuclear bomb by Nazi scientists, but had only driven their research underground. The unforeseen consequence was that a doomsday device many times more powerful than the lethal weapon used on Hiroshima slowly took shape. Alternately brutal, terrifying, and tense, The Sky Club is a dark and highly recommended saga will suspend the reader on edge with Ian Feldman's gift for masterful and "reader engaging" prose.

I saw this book first on the website:
http://www.theskyclub.cc
Then I purchased it and found that the story was filled with very visual accounts of historical characters and events throughout the early years of Hitler's Reich and the Second World War.
The entire story is a fantastic journey into a very likely scenario that might have changed the course of world history.
A great read. This man is a born story teller!

Preparing for death is not fun, but for parents of children with special needs it is especially necessary to give some real thought to planning a child's long-term future. This book is a straightforward reference that makes the process a little less daunting and is great preparation for communicating knowledgeably with a lawyer and a financial planner. It sets forth the right questions without insinuating what the best choices might be, including those about how estate planning choices siblings and the extended family. All of the options are presented so that parents, in consultation with their attorney, can make the best possible plans with as little angst as possible.

This is a great item, but not a book. It is actually a computer game. The system requirements can be seen above. There is plenty to do in this game and is very fun. Highly Recommended!

Book is well written and considered the real world issue and work.

I am giving 4 star because it could be better by including more real world example and other features of SSIS.

But its good reference if you have basic knowledge and want to build complex solution.

This book was written a year or so after SSIS 2005 was released. It has some good best practice information forged from developing production ETL systems with SSIS. Some of the books released at the time of the product release lacked that perspective. I recommend this book.

there is a lot of advanced features of SSIS that I needed to learn, that BOL and Google seraches were not helping with. This book was a great help.
It is advanced, and not meant to be your primary resource or used for learning SSIS.

There are lots of 5-star books with great content, but with poor samples. Unfortunately, this is one of those books.

Did anybody try the samples of Chapter 3? The sample of Figure 3-26 returns many records back (not empty as shown in the book), maybe because there is millisecond in the modified date field; the sample of Figure 3-27 does not work at all, because SSIS complains the value of timestamp field can not be assigned to that variable; the sample of figure 3-32 has no required flat file available in the downloaded zip file ...

There are solutions to fix them, of course. But, the samples do not work really annoyed me.

Understand the 2 stars - they have nothing to do with the value or not of this book as a guide to doing Business Intelligence work with SSIS. I have _no_ opinion on that subject.

What I bought this book for was as an SSIS reference, for an ETL project I am working on. Now, if this book was titled "Advanced _Business_ _Intelligence_ using SSIS" I wouldn't have bought it. I researched this book in advance, and might have bought the companion Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Programmer to Programmer), if that book, also by WROX, hadn't generally been panned by its reviewers.

The focus of this book is to provide enough background to do advanced BI work. Yes, that does include concepts like deploying and debugging. It is probably good at that job, which is why it gets good reviews. Hey, it almost got me interested in BI. But there is surprisingly little outside of the BI target audience's interest. As a result, I've pretty much had to rely on Google, Google Groups and BOL (yeccch) instead of this book - every time I tried to look something up, I found it not to be covered.

An example of how thorough it is in general SSIS, non BI-coverage?

From p.19

"One of the most important types of container is the ForEachLoop container. With this container..."

OK, so this is one of the most important concepts, right? Yes, and it gets 2 paragraphs worth of coverage in the whole book, none of which tell you how to use it. 200 words, at most, to cover "one of the most important" types of container and they also consider containers to be important.

In case you wonder, I want to loop through a rowset and fire off Execute SQL tasks to update or insert rows in a another database. While we are at it, SQL Tasks are also a subject deemed beneath the interest of this book.

Way to go Wrox!

The 3rd lame WROX book I've gotten and I am getting tired of the series. 'Programmer to Programmer', perhaps, but without the benefit of an editor in between, for sure.

p.s. Again, please disregard my review if you want to do BI work. This review only applies if you have a wider focus than BI-only work, for example wanting to use SSIS to wrap SQL statements outside of a programming language.

Great book, mostly about MMA/Vale Tudo fighting, a lot of positions are depending on strikes. Nevertheless a lot of moves can be used in submission grappling as well. One of the most complete books written up to now, shows a lot of variations, clear fotos, showing good angles. Highly recommended for wrestlers who want to enter the submission/NHB game as well as for ground and pounders to complete their ground game and get submssions from nearly every position instead of making the sport so bloody.

Overall, this was the best book I have read on the subject, hands down. I read Iverson's first book and the second edition is much improved. I appreciated the emphasis on stand up fighting including the many positions such as free striking, closing the distance and the clinch, to include muay thai, underam clinches, and the like. I also liked how much emphasis was placed on striking and how to incorporate it into every position like the rear mount, side control, etc. Making this book a truly complete one are the techniques for repositioning, defenses, and escapes. This book tells me how to do take downs, how to transition from those takedowns to a guard pass, how to secure a good ground control position, and then how to submit my opponent either with knees, elbows, and punches or a variety of submissions. Furthermore, I bought this book from one of the authorized dealers for only $20. What a good deal.

Get this book. The second edition of this book is outstanding. The pictures are easy to understand and follow. I have checked out many different books on submission fighting and this one actually delivers. Iverson knows his stuff and it shows in this book.

I felt that this book was a half way decent book. For one thing it will show very inexperienced beginners how to apply arm bars and chokes and various other techniques and also how to do it from many, many different angles & variations. One thing that I personally like to see in grappling books is the set up to the takedown, the physics of the takedown, and then the application of the grappling technique and how to increase the leverage, or generally improve the technique. This book has very basic takedowns (but sometimes the simplest way is the easiest)And the explanation of the physics of the hold are not the best I have ever seen. Also it does not show any clothing induced chokes, due to the fact that both combatants are in just shorts and shoes. All in all it is a great book for beginners to learn how to apply a hold and how to do it from many many many variations, and angles. But it has very little information on passing the gaurd, or drawing your opponent of his base.

I was let down by this book. everyone on this site thought it was great. however i found that it lacked alot of detail needed for a submission, and there was nothing about seting up submissions in this book. this book does have alot of submissions but many of them would be shut down by somone with less then a year in the sport. for the price of this book you can get something better that will give you more insight into the game of submission fighting.

Not only that this is the only book about Korean politics at the court from a woman's perspective, but it is also one of a very few pieces of literature that was written in Hangul. Korea, together with Japan and Vietnam were influenced heavily by Chinese culture and literature. Noble men during this time studied and wrote in Classical Chinese, which left women, the less educated ones, to be masters of their native languages.

Lady Hyegyong memoir was written in her old age for the purpose of restoring honor to her father, uncle, brother and husband who were either disgraced or killed during the time they served at the kings' courts. This book gives the readers vivid (and even shocking) details of the ways of life under Confucian laws, how people lived, died and even murdered. In Confucius teachings, the authority of the king and the father was absolute. When the king ordered his subject to die, if he did not obey, he would be deemed disloyal. When the father ordered the son to die, if he did not obey, he would be deemed unfilial.

When Sado's mental illness was to the point of uncontrollable, king Yongjo had no choice, but to have him put to death for the kingdom's sake. When king Yongjo ordered his son to step into the (4ft x 4ft x 4ft) rice chest, and prince Sado did it without any objection, he was evoking the righteousness between father and son. If he evoked the death sentence as a king, Sado's wife and son would also be tainted by Sado's crimes and potentially would also be sentenced to death with Sado In having Sado's brother adopting Sado's son posthumously, he also was able save his daughter in law and grand child from the question of legitimacy.

Lady Heyegyong also demonstrated a life of virtue when she successfully maintained these proper relationships between herself and her parents, husband and son: `a perfect woman must obey her father when she is a child, her husband when a wife and her son when she is a widow' (Confucius).

an interesting book. It makes the writings of a crown princess more informative and intense. I would recommend this book but readers might want to read a simpler version. The book is a little messy and isn't in the form of the beginning of the story to the end. Bits and pieces are told in different chapters.

Overall, an interesting story.

Beyond the scholarly merit and historical significance of this book, the story is hugely compelling, not merely for the facts of the chilling event, but for several other reasons.

First, the view Lady Hyegyong provides of the court life and the strict Confucian beliefs that hinge on filial piety, loyalty, virtue and honor is evident more in what she doesn't say than what is said. It's a growing subtle presentation of how life unfolded within these confines of faith, and as a result, how tragedy after tragedy continued to compound. One could read the Analects or any Neo-Confucian work, and not understand to the degree shown here the depths of the practice and belief that affected every aspect of life in the late Choson era.

Second, along with JaHyun Kim Haboush's careful introduction, the annotations she has so helpfully added, the glossaries and appendices, the book presents a highly respectful translation that brings forth all the humanity of the players in a way that makes the story unfold like a novel of hope, horror, survival and the desire for inner peace and heavenly redemption.

Third, by providing the historical literary context of these MEMOIRS (in the introduction), we benefit from understanding not only the historical events but the tense cultural climate and the severe limitations that Lady Hyegyong had to challenge and overcome in order to redeem the honor of her family. Almost as a self-reflective postmodern work of existentialism, the book stands as its own redemptive testament to its themes.

To read of this historical event from one who suffered in its aftermath, and who despite the strictures of her sex and position could tell of it with artistry, is an amazing literary experience.

I think Haboush was trying to adhere to the original piece how the Crown prince wrote it but the sequence of events perhaps could have been ordered better? Because they are divided into 4 sections and each memoir tells the same story in different perspective and you have to go back.

Also some of the Korean names and terms I would have liked to have seen them typed both in Korean as well. It was had to make out what it meant.

It clarified, especially the last memoir (1805) how and why Sado seja was killed. History often sites that It was his father's extreme dislike for that drove to it. He could not have been disposed because there would have been factions that would try to put him back up on the throne.

"The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong" is actually four different works written by one woman, a circumspect, scrupulous, unfortunate 18th Century Korean aristocrat. The memoirs are, successively, a family injunction, a memorial, a biography, and a historiography. At the center of the collection sits Hong Hyegyong and her husband, Crown Prince Sado. "The Memoirs" span the reigns of Yongjo, Chongjo, and Sunjo, and the careers of Lady Hyegyong's father, Hong Ponghan, and her older brothers.

Lady Hong Hyegyong was the wife of Crown Prince Sado, who in 1762, was ordered by his father, King Yongjo, to step into a rice chest, which was susequently bound and covered in sod. Crown Prince Sado had been punished by his father for a series of heinous murders caused by Sado's mental illness. Lady Hyegyong and her family, including her son, the future King Chongjo, then became the focal point of factional quarrels at court, each side using the execution of the Crown Prince, to its own political advantage.

Lady Hyegyong, in the first three memoirs, strives to defend her father and brothers against chages of treason and complicity in Sado's execution. The last memoir is a defense of her husband. All four are addressed to her grandson, King Sunjo, to restore the honor of her family.

Although Lady Hyegyong nor Haboush could ascertain the specific cause of Crown Prince Sado's illness, and Lady Hyegyong's anecdotal evidence is hardly scientific, I would like to offer ''hwabyong'', or, in Korean, ''fire disease'' or ''anger disease''. ''Hwabyong'', as offered by Alford in "Think No Evil: Korean Values In The Age Of Globalization" (see review), is ''...a unique Korean folk syndrome...'' characterized by ''...anxiety, panic,...and the suppression of anger...'' (p. 77). Korean fire disease's ''...symptoms reflect[s] the constraints of the culture: not just on the expression of of emotion, but the lack of opportunity...to change...''(p. 79). Only Crown Prince Sado,and the evidence offered in "The Memoir of 1805", can affirm this conjecture.

The last work, "The Memoir of 1805", is a brilliant psychological portrait of Crown Prince Sado. It is a revealing exercise in historical writing, and also reveals the mind of an extraordinary woman trying to understand some of the most harrowing personal tragedies any spouse or daughter might face.

"The Memoirs" can be compared to Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji", "Hamlet", and the lives of the Roman Emperors. One major failing of Haboush's''Introduction'' is, that she does not place the incidents in a broader historical and international context. But she does manage to argue against abridging and collecting each work into a longer historical novel. A broader focus would further aid in understanding Lady Hyegyong's dedication in defense of her brothers and father.

This is not only a valuable history, but it is also another demonstration of the narrative powers of Asian women authors operating in a patriarchical, almost misogynistic, culture.