Computer Science Books

Every field has its overused word. In sports it is super-star and in publishing it is definitive. However, there can be no dispute that this book can be described using both of those words.
With complete explanations followed by problems and references, this is the place to look if you have any interest in this area. The problems range from the near obvious and trivial to the unsolved. The mathematics is often strenuous, but not overwhelming, as many times the proofs require many cases. Each chapter terminates in a notes and reference section that is superb. It recapitulates the history and contains an enormous number of references. This is especially helpful given the wide range of sources. Examples include the expected ones in mathematics and geometry, but also crystallography, virology, art, philosophy, and quilting. The authors also take the extra effort to point out what is as yet unsolved.
An authoritative work that makes one plea for a second edition, this book is everything you could ask of it.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.

In the preface of "Tilings and Patterns: An Introduction," the authors write: "This volume is a brief edition...comprising the first seven chapters of our earlier book Tilings and Patterns... The present paperback version contains all the material from the oirginal text that deals with tilings by regular polygons, the topological and symmetry properties of tilings, the motif-transitive patterns in general, and the special cases where the motif is a circular or elliptical disk or a straight-line segment. It also includes several classifications of very symmetric tilings." There is no indication of what topics were covered in the remaining chapters (8-12) of the original edition.

This is deep, dense and thorough; on a topic that was without such a definitive reference book. This is not what i would call a completely accessible book, to persons that are not professional mathematicians, but the crisp and fascinating illustrations are compelling to anyone with an active curiosity.

Worthwhile for interested parties; an single-volume encyclopaedia on the subjects of Tesselations, tiling, and intriguing information on conceptual patterns.

This book is a magnificent achievement.

I just want to gush about this book, but that won't do you any good. It is the very best in its field. Just start there.

Grunwald and Shepard have put together the definitive book on ways to tile the two dimensional plane. "Tiling" means covering the 2D universe with interlocking figures, so that no gap remains. Bathroom tiles do that, and patterns of brick on walls, and all of those wonderful geometries that the Muslim artists raised to their god in place of graven images.

That can not be enough for the very strongest of creative minds. The authors show the "Penrose tiles", that cover the world without ever repeating. Penrose used a five-way plan, which barely meets the needs of the world's symmetries. Amman used a four-way plan, like floor tiles, but created tiles that forever create new patterns. The pattern fills the world, but never repeats (except in detail). And then, there are the spiral tiles - perfectly regular, and different at every scale.

The artist will savor the richness of the plane. A mathematician will sink deeply into the many symmetries that turn THIS point into all points, or no other, or some, or all of the above. The student will struggle through the problems at the end of each chapter. Thoughtful readers will simply find themselves wandering away from every page, where some seed of thought blossoms in your mind.

I can not imagine how this could have gone out of print. I really can't. This book is the only one that covers its topic in !every! way. Depending on who you are, you must have it.

//wiredweird

On the advice of both Al Gore and George Bush I had a look at this book. Not only is it easy to carry and pleasant to read, it facilitates forgetting those tiresome Florida recounts. I recommend this as the Great Escape read of the 21st century.

On my wife's advice I picked up and studied this book. I find that the clarity and organization are unparalleled, truly a find among the many available books on chaos and computing. Buy it!

Bill and Carol suggested I have a look, and it was worthwhile. Mostly true. Unfortunately the nice picture of me which appeared in Computational Statistical Mechanics (same author) was inadvertently omitted from the book

This book, written by my husband, Bill Hoover, is tops on style and content. I recommend it without reservation.

This book is wonderful. It makes navigation easy to understand. There are tons of interesting facts and little biographies. The experiments are easy to do and very appropriate.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - and learned quite a few new things, even though I've been out of school for years. The author really knows how to present informative material in a fun and interesting way.

It is obvious that the author did a lot of research and put a lot of time into this book. There are lots of fun facts and surprising bits of trivia - plus, the projects and activities are wonderful, and really get kids' imaginations working.

Navigation is a complex topic. Presenting the history of navigation in a way that children can understand is a daunting task, but Tools of Navigation pulls it off. I can see this book being used by homeschoolers and school kids as the resource for a year long study, but each chapter would stand on its own for any interested student. A nice thing about this book is how many of the activities take place outdoors: traveling by compass, mapping your backyard, and, our favorite, geocaching. It also breaks down map reading to make it easy for kids to learn. I look forward to teaching this section to my two kids so that I'll have a couple of navigators in the backseat during car rides!

This book is titled "Tools of Navigation, a Kid's Guide to the History & Science of Finding Your Way," but this 45-year-old reviewer found it fascinating. I've always loved reading books about people who venture to the North Pole, through the Amazon Rainforest, or across the Sahara Desert, but always wondered how they did it without getting hopelessly lost. Author Rachel Dickinson sheds light on this mystery.

The book explains navigation from the Ice Age to the present, and also includes info on ancient navigators such as Marco Polo, Lewis & Clark, Robert Peary, and Ferdinand Magellan. It's very easy to understand and includes great photos and lots of fun activities, such as: how to make your own compass, go on a treasure hunt, work with topographic maps, and make a sky chart that maps out constellations.

Rachel Dickinson does a wonderful job of explaining navigation and history. It's a great book for parents to share with their children or teachers to share with their classroom. But it's also a fascinating read for anyone interested in navigation, history, and early explorers.

Let me begin by saying that I only got through the chapter on triangulations. I used this book in an undergraduate topology course where the instructor was not the best at teaching topology. So, I had to self-study with this book.

The first three chapters of the book are very well written. The theorems are proven in an intuitive manner that makes sense with some analysis background. Also, the exercises encourage, and at times force, the reader to really understand the topologies of the reals. The reader then is introduced to general topological spaces, including quotient and product topologies. This material is also very well written and relatively easy to understand, with some work by the reader.

The chapter on triangulations and surfaces is very difficult to understand. In the first few chapters, I could tell that the casual language chosen by the author would eventually lead to trouble. The careful word choices necessary in a math book were missing in this chapter. Little details like "relative to" and "in" are left out, sometimes requiring hours of careful reading of definitions trying to figure out exactly what the author means. This, to me, in unacceptable. The book reads more like lecture notes and less like a text book. Fortunately, I also purchased Munkres' topology book and referred to that whenever I didn't understand the author's explanation, which was a lot in the last chapter I studied.

Taking into account all the deficiencies with this book, I would still recommend it just for the first 3 chapters. These chapters are an excelent introduction to topology. I give this book 4 stars because it offers a good introduction to general topology. I also liked how the author put the exercises in the sections. This made it easy to see exactly what you should try to use in your proofs. I would also getting another, more theoretical, book to use as a reference if(when?) you get stuck by the author's poor choice of words.

This is a very readable introduction to homology theory, replete with good illustrations and lucid writing. Kinsey does a great job of motivating and explaining her material. I only wish I could have had a text this readable when I was a student.

I must say that this is by far the best topology text that I have seen. Very readable, easy to follow. The anecdotal comments are also amusing. I'm particularly fond of the Ham and Cheese Sandwich Theorem! Highly recommend.

Considering several other undergrad topology texts, e.g. Munkres, Armstrong, etc. this is the easiest to work with. Certainly the best text for self-study. The problems are not too difficult yet they help you grasp concepts as well. They are also laid out as you go; so every so often while you read the text you encounter a problem and you do it as you go. It is much better than putting them in the back of the chapters, as most text do. It is better to lay the problems in the text so you are encouraged to do them as you learn the material. The material in the text is very well explained and contrary to the previous review, is very well-suited, and with sufficient rigor, for mathematics students. The fact that this book "can be grasped at the sophomore level" as the previous revewer claims (and I agree with) lends credence to the simplicity of presentation of the material. Some reviewers I suppose aren't satisfied unless they see a hyperdense conglomeration of gobbledygook which characterizes so many mathematics texts. I don't fall into that camp and if you don't either and at the same want to begin study in topology then I highly recommend this book.

Traffic Engineering and QoS Optimization of Integrated Voice & Data Networks (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking)

Jerry Ash is a well known expert in the field and managed to provide a thorough and comprehensive analysis on QoS and Traffic Engineering. The reader will undoubtedly find in this book a large amount of valuable information illustrated by case studies. A recommended reading for anyone interested in QoS & Traffic Engineering.

Jerry Ash draws on his long history at the forefront of research and development in traffic engineering and network planning to provide a comprehensive view of how traffic engineering and network optimization can be applied to provide quality of service in today's networks. Drawing on lessons from the past, he provides a thorough overview and worked examples for modern integrated networks.

This is an important read for anyone serious about studying the topic.

This is an very important book describing a comprehensive coherent vision of a converged network infrastructure (architecture and protocols) for the Next Generation Network (NGN) along with large scale case studies for the AT&T converged network using discrete event simulation, and other dimensioning tools developed by the author and his colleagues over the past two decades at AT&T. The author Dr Gerald Ash has pioneered the implementation of dynamic routing methods within AT&T and WIN over the past two decades and is a leading authority in this area. He has now turned his attention to extending these highly successful techniques to the Next Generation Network (NGN) where all communication and communication services are supported on a converged infrastructure. Dr Ash has been a tireless contributor to a number of standards bodies (ITU-T, ATM Forum and IETF). This direct experience places him in a unique position to assess the challenges of network convergence and indeed he has already removed potential obstacles to his vision of the NGN by participating in the necessary Traffic Engineering extensions to RSVP, LDP etc. This document advances an important class of evolution possibilities, namely for an IP/(G)MPLS/DWDM protocol stack in greater depth and scope than other proposals made to date. It is very timely in that we are now at a crossroads where there are various alternative visions extant indicating how the Internet could or should evolve. The articulation of a comprehensive coherent vision of the NGN and its evaluation is a monumental task and for this Dr Ash deserves commendation. It is made difficult not only because of technical challenges but also because of the divergent cultures humorously represented by the Bellhead/Nethead caricatures.

Dr. Lorne G. Mason,
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
McGill University
Montreal Quebec. Canada

A remarkable feature of this book is unusual combination of depth and breadth. Long-term social, political and economic dynamics consistently remains in the limelight of analysis: suffice it to recall names of Tocqueville, Toynbee, Drucker, and Bell. Yet even against such illustrious benchmarks, the book is fresh, original, and - as a pleasant surprise - engaging to read.

The depth of the book is in exploration of why some institutions are more amenable and adaptable to change than others. The main hypothesis is simple yet plausible: The less hierarchical and more horizontal are society' institutions, the more adaptable and productive is the society. Take, the problem of alcoholism, for instance. Sweden is consistently more efficient in dealing with it than most other countries because it is largely non-state activity (although the government does provide a conducive framework for it), organized through a variety of horizontal and voluntary associations. Going from mundane to more dramatic, take a phenomenon of revolution. From the perspective of the book, any revolution is a sign of inflexibility. The deepness of the book is analysis (although such analysis is in its infancy) of organizational structures which institutionalize horizontal and network architecture of society. Network is easily the most frequently used terms of the literature but all too often networks are discussed as inherently informal, as emerging in addition to formal principal- agent institutions. The breadth of the book makes it an engaging read. The author juxtaposes, for instance, Stalinist Soviet Union and fascist Germany without falling into simplification. Again, a skeptic would say that after H. Arendt such juxtapositions are not new, but the author does add fresh features.

The author is not your typical academics. He has been an official in the World Bank and Minister of Finance of his native el Salvador. He is a `thinking doer': his interest in analytics and theory is eminently practical. This `thinking doer'' perspective in Latin America proved eclectic and, for that reason, eminently insightful. Suffice is to recall Albert Hirschman' refreshingly original contributions or more recently Carlota Perez' (who is from Venezuela) 2004 book on how long-term co-evolution of financial and technological structures opens up opportunities for leapfrogging.

I enjoyed thoroughly this book and, more importantly, I learned allot.

The Triumph of the Flexible Society is essential reading for: national or international policy decision makers, for policy thinkers and designers, and for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in the world today. This really includes everyone.

The book does many things to help us cope better with the world of today.

Manuel Hinds provides a strong and clear conceptual framework to understand why, extremely rapid change in societies leads them to become defensive -- protecting rents and privilege -- and autocratic. In cases of extremely large and fast change, like the industrial revolution, many countries were unable to cope and ended up in bloody totalitarian regimes. The stresses of change caused by the industrial revolution led France to go from the enthusiasm of the 1789 revolution to the bloody vertical autocracy of Napoleon. The same thing happened in Russia; it went from the energy of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, to the long Stalin tyranny, one of the most autocratic and bloody periods in Russian history. In Germany, the same forces of change started to open the society in the Weimar governments of the 1930s, only to end up in the horror of the the Nazi regime a few years later.

Manuel Hinds lucidly explains what is happening today by analyzing what the connectivity revolution is doing and why its embarking all of us into a new period of "mega" change. Then he elucidates us as to the large risks that history can repeat itself --again. We may be now in a paradise of openness, competitive markets, individual rights and democracy, but the stresses of defensiveness and reaction are brewing all over the world. In its rapid and increasingly ubiquitous unfolding -- affecting everyone, in their work, culture and identity -- the connectivity revolution is leading many individuals and countries to unleash the same autocratic reflexes that we suffered in the past processes of massive change.

If there is one book you read thus year , I suggest you read The Triumph of the Flexible Society.

Manuel Hinds' book "The Triumph of the Flexible Society" may not only change the way you think about the world, it may change what you "do" about the world. Hinds has written a profound analysis of the way in which different societies deal with the forces of change. Hinds focuses on two major changes in technology-the industrial revolution and the revolution in connectivity. The connectivity revolution, now only in its early stages, includes, but is much broader than, globalization. Revolutions of this magnitude create opportunities, but at the same time they destroy imbedded capital and existing labor skills. Losers in this revolution may seek to maintain their positions in society by impeding change and many will want to restore the order of the past by seeking refuge in one or another form of fundamentalism. Countries that have strong, flexible and horizontal institutions will reap the benefits but countries with vertical, authoritarian structures are more rigid and more likely to attempt to protect the established order. The open, liberal society will be threatened by forces from without, but, more importantly, from forces within. Hinds use his framework to analyze the destructive regimes of the 20th century, Nazism and Communism, and the plight of the developing countries. He also seeks to provide us with the understanding we shall need to cope with the coming revolution in connectivity. This is a "must read" for anyone attempting to understand and deal with the forces behind past and present social, political and economic developments. - Millard Long

In my view, this book contains remarkable analysis and insights into how contemporary industrial culture and society is evolving in response to the world economic and political situation. While some of the earlier chapters are not easy to read, one of the later chapters contains a highly original analysis of recent changes in American culture and society and what has caused these changes that I have not seen presented elsewhere and which I think are right on! I think, while Manuel's conclusions are valid, some are troubling in their implications with respect to the future health of American culture and society. The book also addresses changes in other countries in response to the same stimuli. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding how contemporary American culture and society are evolving and why.

Before reading this book I read "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide". I can say that "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" is about the theory and "UML 2 and the Unified Process..." is about practice.

I think that both books are must for UML beginners and reference for the UML professionals.

In "UML 2 and the Unified Process.." authors show UML in action within the Unified Process, a framework for software development. The book describes how to analyze and design a software by giving a real example. Given examples are also complete and available online.

The language of the book is simple (easy to understand) and its contents is organized very well.

This book gave me an insight about the UML and also introduced me to the Unified Process. I would recommend it with 5+ stars to everybody.

As a matter of fact I'm not an UML fan nor I particularly favour unified process. Indeed, I'm much more into Agile Development and XP.

The authors do not try to explain why unified process should be better than other processes. They just describe the method: It's up to the reader to decide which parts of the method are good or bad for his job. The reader is not bored with long enthusiastic comments on how he will be a more capable engineer after learning UML and UP. Unified Process is described in an unbiased and precise way: even those who do not favour UP may gather new and interesting ideas to incorporate in their development method.

The approach on UML is even more interesting. The basic ideas is that graphics should be a view, but what matters is text (which *is* something that the UML creators *did* think). Far to many lesser books focus on diagrams and miss to explain the interesting part is their semantics and their descriptions. Indeed, I try not to use UML unless I'm rather sure it's the best way to express a given concept: this book is a helpful reference on how to write correct and practical specifications using UML.

This is a great useful book.

UML has grown. A few years ago, when UML was just getting accepted, a book on how to use it would have been much thinner. But the successful broad uptake of UML led to its semantic notation being expanded. What the authors give us here is a thorough exposition of UML 2.0 and how to use it.

As you might expect, there are numerous examples in UML. Which, to many readers, might be more understandable than a mere abstract diagram. But the book is more than just about explaining the UML semantics. It also goes into the Unified Process for running a project, and how this can be documented in UML. By doing so, the authors hope to better enable an understanding of both.

There is also something else, related to the above, but sufficiently different and important to warrant notice. If you write in any object oriented language, it requires certain skills in designing classes and how they interact. Part 4 of the book concerns these issues, which it discusses under the rubric of "Design". A good explanation of the basic concepts. Like inheritance versus aggregation, or inheritance versus interfaces. Or why the lack of multiple inheritance in a language like C# or Java is not necessarily a deficiency.

This book gives a good introduction into modern software enigeering and I think that especially the first chapters about basics in object orientation and how the whole process works should be read by every person participating in a software project. I think these chapters are also worth reading for non computer science people.

This book covers almost all of the information needed for A Levle.

I would recomend purchasing it in prefrance to other revisoion books.

Quite simply, this is the best general purpose computing book I have ever read. It would say it is absolute essential for A-level students, but also has an awful lot to offer anyone else, as this will act as a superb reference book for many years to come. If you are studying computing in any form, then you are doing yourself an injustice by not owning this superb book....

If you are an A level computing student, I strongly recommend you to buy this book. Most information in the book is up to date. Color printed, which can always keep you awake. Even if you feel the book not enough for you, it provides some web site for you to reinforce the book.

The Best A level book I have seen. Covers all of the most recent material

I picked this text for my virtual reality course here at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and found it to be an excellent, well written, comprehensive introduction to the field.

It is interesting this book, since gives a complete visualization of the current virtual reality. In form didactics it travels all the fields of the VR, not serving alone for a neophyte, also for somebody that the VR knows. Very good book
Hugo Neira S

I received this book shortly after it was published. Since then it has served well as a reference for my students working in my VR research group, as well as being very enlightening for me as well.
I will be teaching a course on VR the next two spring semesters at Valparaiso University, and will be using this text.
The book does a great job of spanning the current VR technology out there, as well as addressing issues for development. I'd recommend it for VR researchers, as well as those teaching VR at the undergrad or grad level.

Understanding Virtual Reality" is the definitive, authoritative, and exhausive exploration of the field by two insiders and practioners, Sherman and Craig. Virtual reality, a uniquely viewer-centric, large field-of-view, dynamic display technology has evolved over the past decade in many physical formats, driven by many software applications using a variety of operating systems, computers, and specialized libraries. Sherman and Craig capture them all in this substantial volume.

Most writing about virtual reality involves summarizing and interpreting interviews and demos, with massive doses of the speculative and the spectacular, and lots of historical fuzziness. Sherman and Craig, however, lived in the world of actual VR production at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where corporate researchers, educators, scientists, and artists make use of this technology in their daily work. They have personally suffered with VR tech and benefited greatly from access to it as well as to amazing amounts of computing, engineering, and scientific talent. They were held to real deadlines of corporate contracts, scientific conference demonstrations, and the design of IMAX productions. While they were doing all this, they were also writing this book. As a result, "Understanding Virtual Reality" has the integrity and feel of a long-term, eyewitness account and a personal journal, because these production-oriented researchers were documenting the times contemporaneously, rather than trying to reconstruct the details years later.

I know all this because I was their group leader for a couple of years in the mid-90's at NCSA, and their colleague in VR the years before and after. I co-invented the CAVE hardware, among other things, with Dan Sandin at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 1991.

I've been using various shell commands I picked up here and there over the past couple years. I decided it was time to buckle down and gain a deeper understanding of the what and the why. After spending a couple of hours with this book, I have the basics solidly under my belt. The writing is clear, concise, and entertaining. I only wish I would have started here instead of picking it up piecemeal (and painfully) via various websites.

I don't know if an experienced user would find it as compelling, but for a newbie, it's a godsend.

UNIX,(3rd Edition) by Deborah & Eric Ray is the best book I've come across for learning the fundamentals of this operating system and for using a Linix distribution for the first time. This book is accessible to beginners and experienced users alike. Its format and examples lend themselves to self-study and encourage experimentation. I used it as my companion reference for learning the Linix MEPIS distribution and it worked perfectly. I highly recommend it for every user of the UNIX OS who wants a handy and easy-to-follow guide.

I was wondering through the Unix maze, untill this small title cleared everything up. A little delight to have. If only I had known it existed, I would not have had my butt kicked from title to title, on craps, who called themselves Unix learning guides.

I have been looking for good Unix book for beginer. I am in computer industry for 10 years, mostly in web applications. My unix knowledge is minimal (first 5 chapters of this book). Recently I decided to improve my skills to get ready for shell scripts. I found this book in my local library.

Book was organized very well, simple and visual approach ensures you like a teacher. Straight to the point and simple. I highly recommand this book to beginers and intermediate levels. If you planning to jump into shell script, first refresh your basics from this book.