Technology Books

Buy it for the great cars!
But it for the great photos of the cars!
Buy it for the play by play of each and every race.
-for the Amazing list pro drivers whom were brave enough to get behind the wheels of these 'Big Bangers!
-for the behind the scenes looks at these monster big block engines and how they pushed the envelope of technology.
-for the wild designs as each team played at the first tentative steps at understanding Aerodynamic down force!

Nothing, nothing was more grand or powerful at that time! So get this book that perfectly captures the time when Racing was Dangerous, but Sex was not.

OK, I am a huge Pete Lyons fan. He lived it and wrote about it so we could also live it. Great job and great book. A must read if you are a Can Am fan or a fan of the "good old days" of motor sports where determination and a few bucks could get you in the game.

This is a delightful book for any racing enthusiast who either loved the Can-Am or wants to learn why older fans revere it.

While Pete Lyons is as scrupulous as someone like Doug Nye about accuracy for such details as chassis numbers, Pete uses such information only to make sure that his narrative is accurate and consistent or to authoritatively state interesting facts, such as the cars that won consecutive events, or won the same events in consecutive years, or were raced by certain drivers.

Pete Lyons and Doug Nye are THE names for any library. Once again Pete lives up to a stellar reputation and this book is another must have for your collection.
Can Am is such a beloved series that you have to have the best book in your library and this is the one to build your library from.
I hope this helps you make your decision on purchase.

Reading Lyons' book is like reading the race reports at the time in Competion Press and Road & Track, with the added perspective of knowing how it all turns out after the rubber dust has settled. The candid driver shots of Bruce, Denny, Dan, Mark and the rest of these heroes of my college days, with the exquisite on-track shots and hardware close-ups, bring it all back in a great rush. It's a very difficult book to set down, time just seems to fly, as it seems those years did. It's a marvellous reminiscence of those larger-than-life men and the fastest road-racing machines ever built.

Top Marks for this highly readable and clear intro to Voice over IP. The subject matter is dealt with in reasonable detail and the author achieves great clarity in explaining difficult technical concepts. He also delves a bit into the history and background which also helps to put the subject matter in context. He even adds a small example of how to go about dimensioning a VOIP network at the end of the book.

Aimed specifically at designers of public telecommunications networks, this easy to read book provides practical and useful hands-on information. Where necessary, topics are covered in great detail. For example, 120 pages are dedicated to H.323. Softswitch architecture and programming are covered, and 55 pages are devoted to discussing Quality of Service issues.

We believe this book to be an essential read, and recommend it highly.

Great book on VoIP, still emerging technology. It did a great job in explaining concepts related to QoS such as RSVP, DiffServ and MPLS. Right from basics such as IP, UDP, TCP and various coding techniques you will find great explanation to each and every item. If you are interested in knowing about VoIP or you if u wanna work on VoIP this is the ONLY book you need. There is very detailed and neat explanation related to MGCP, MEGACO, SS7 and SIP too. The only thing that i felt lacking is testing of voice quality both subjective and objective and how they could be done. No doubt in giving 5 *s to it, great job!

This book does a very good job of giving an introduction to the VoIP world. As a professional in the telecom domain, I found this book very useful. Application of VoIP to telco domain as in the case of softswitch architecture for backhaul and the QoS issues that carriers have to deal with is also well covered at a good amount of detail. The book also provides detailed discussion on the protocols. However, I skipped passed these sections and unable to comment if such material was covered well.

Overall - a very good book. Highly recommend it.

I serious think that I should not write this review since I do not understand half of this book, but then again, I have read this and also Cisco Intergrated Voice Data and can in some way be a poor/insufficient abeit enthusastic tour guide. I have noticed other reviewers describing this book as great - but I do not think this book is comparable to monumental classic like Jeff Doyle or Kennedy Clarks books on Routing and Switching - where they display in-depth knowledge on the topic plus an ability to explain thing in the clearest possible way. I rate this book 5 stars for the sole reason that the author do appear to have an overwhelming knowledge of computer telephony - although I cannot quite judge whether they are technically accurate or error free - and has taken his valueable time off to write them down and share with us. While the author definitely has the kindest intention of making it "understanable" to even the not-so-technically-advance group of reader - as is evidenced in the way he start off this book by explaining why bother with IP telephony, and why TCP/IP is inherently unsuitable for IP telephony - I suspect that when it come to harder topics like H.323, SIP etc - there is simply no way or no time to find a more reader friendly way to present it. In the end it is a tough read - so tough that I will have to put it aside for a while as you need to be in the highest state or mental agility and strength to make hard yakka through the book. Nevertheless, this book is a useful reference - and for topics that this author decide not to include - check out Cisco's Integrated Voice and Data.

This book was not intended as a communication theory text, but it does a great job of providing the basic results in an organized fashion. It serves as a good reference for me for CDMA related issues, or channel models and fading/diversity analysis.

Definitely recommend the book if you can find one at a decent price. Five stars is granted for the reference use of this book, this should not be a first timers' textbook.

Artech House books are usually packed with errors, since there is no serious review process. But refreshingly this book does not come with a big pack of errata despite the large content. Congradulations to the authors...

This book is particularly best reference for research students working in the area of CDMA systems design or algorithm development. With extensive coverage, you will find any thing that you need to know about CDMA IS-95 systems.

Artech house is the best publisher of CDMA books on the planet, hands down

This book is a very complete explanation of spread spectrum technics. The book is centered in IS-95 standard, but the detail in every subject makes it useful for other standards, like WCDMA and CDMA2000. After reading this book i feel that i can handle any spreading and codification technic. To get 3G to the real world, we need to handle the most inner principles of technology. With this book we have and excelent presentation of this principles, for the present and the future.

This book not only clearly presents the CDMA/spread spectrum theories, but also structurally analyzes the reasons behind IS-95 standard from the system design perspective. As pointed by the other readers, this book is self-contained. However, if you already had a decent communications engineering background, you might find some parts of book are redundant.

HIGHLY recommended!! A perfect CDMA book for both newbie and guru.

I did not know that the person who created the blood banks was black. Charles Drew had to deal with a lot of grief in his life, but he believed in himself and he had great friends. They kept him going.

When he ran out of money during the Depression he almost dropped out of medical school and returned to being a coach of a college but he didn't.

He figured out, what other people couldn't- a way to save lives with blood preseervation.

This was a good book and its well written. It reads like a novel

I thought this was a really good book. I learned a lot about what life was like for Black people 50 years ago.It was really hard. They couldn't go to school or become doctors . When they were sick they couldn't go to hospitals. I didn't know about blood types until I read this book.

This is the kind of book that should be in the hands of every young man in America. Drew overcame the odds and didn't complain. He just did it and lives were saved.My wife bought several copies of this book and gave it to all the boys in our son's scout troop.

My science club read this last week. I was surprised at how primitive medicine was just a few short years ago.

Reading about Dr. Drew and all the challenges he had to face made me more determined than ever to become a doctor.

Charles Drew watched his baby sister get sick. He wanted to save her life but most schools would not let him attend because he was black. He said he "Dreamed High" and found a way. He became a surgeon and helped others become surgeons. He was a great man. I'm glad I read this book.

An excellent book! but if the author can put all the configurations online, and make the scinarios more realistic with more practical exercises, this would be a masterpiece in this area. It is much better than other Cisco CCVP books in many respects. Thank you, the authors, who took readers into consideration when writing this book!

I picked up a copy of "Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers" to use as a study guide for the Implementing Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers (642-453 GWGK). This book was enormously helpful in successfully passing the exam. With that said, this is not an official Cisco Press exam study guide, in fact it cover much more, and was also beneficial to me in passing the CCIE Voice written.

As with most Cisco Press books, the opening chapter covers some basics, in this case the basics of Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers, as well as a high level review of gateway protocols and deployment scenarios.

The subsequent chapters jump right into the meat of the material. Each ensuing chapter covers each topic, such as H.323, SIP, MGCP, Dial Plans, and SRST with great depth and clarity. The book if full of very detailed and comprehensive sample configurations and debug outputs. Finally, the examples throughout the book are based off of the same case study network that is introduced in the opening chapter. As I consider sitting for the CCIE Voice Lab, I anticipate that I will revisit this book again and use the case study in my home lab.

I highly recommend this book to any looking to learning more about Cisco IOS Gateways and Gatekeepers, studying for the CCVP, and/or preparing for the CCIE Voice!

Mark G. Reyero, CCIE 12932

As a person studying for my Voice CCIE, this book is invaluable. It covers a wide range of topics in a coherent, well-articulated fashion. After perusing this book, I finally figured out exactly what an IPIPGW was and how exactly it worked with a VIA gatekeeper.

If you are studying for you Voice CCIE, do yourself a favor and pick up this book.

This book is intended for network engineers, IP Telephony engineers, and Telco engineers who are tasked with the installation, configuration, and maintenance of VoIP and IP Telephony networks. This is an intermediate level book and that the reader understands IP networking and at least is familiar with the Cisco courses: CVoice, CIPT, QoS, IPTT. These imply a basic understanding of VoIP and time-division multiplexing (TDM) voice fundamentals, the basic concepts and configuration of basic IP voice routers and Cisco CallManager basics.

This book is not so much an Exam Cram as a more traditional reference book. That is not to say that it doesn't cover the material that will be found on several Cisco certification tests. It gives a firm foundation in the complex VoIP networks that in which Cisco specializes. Obviously this book covers Cisco equipment, but as Cisco is the major manufacturer of such equipment as well as providing for the certification of workers in the field, that's not a bad place to start.

This book has the advantage of a very good writing style by the three authors. This is important as I don't find computer books to be nearly as much fun to read as say a good sci-fi novel.

I work for a large Cisco reseller and purchase many Cisco Press books to augment knowledge base and assist with best-practices. I have to say that this book is one of the best Cisco Press books I've ever purchased and probably the best Cisco Press AVVID book.
I've been searching for a comprehensive source for DSP information and deployment guidelines, and COR theory. This book does an excellent job on explaining both. It is a must for anyone working with or provisioning DSPs.
In other matters, it is well written and talks plainly of other gateway technologies that AVVID engineers run into day-after-day.
If your looking for VoIP books, this is a must for your library.

Great book, read it everyday. Us Coasties sometimes forget the basics. Read it well and read it often.

I took this book and showed it to my recruiter and he said that it's weight in gold, and that after I was done reading it I woul be ahead of everybody else.

It teaches about ROTC and the uniforms during your hopefull coast guard career. It also teaches all the necessary tools you need to be in the coast guard.

I am in the Coast Guard myself and when I was in boot camp they even handed out copies of this book to us to learn what we needed to know about the USCG. It covers everything from a brief history to customs and courtesies and to Maritime Law Enforcement. It talks about the different knots we use and how to properly tie the knot. There's history on the USCG's uniforms and the different ships we use to the different jobs that we offer. It's a great book for all and I even find myself at times referring to it whenever I need to know something! So I recommend it for anyone who is entering the Coast Guard, looking to up their seamanship skills or just want a refresher!

I was issued one of these in boot camp back in 79. As a American Legion Commander now, I needed to know how to properly handle a weapon while marching and doing drills. Darn I wish I had of keep it. But I ordered the latest edition and see it is still the great manual it always was and still has the commands and the examples of how to do proper manual of arms.

I found the basic knowledge for understanding the computational fluid dynamics. If you have "computational fluid dynamics, Hypersonic and high temperature of gas dynamic" and a software for solve linear system and EDO( like Mathenatica), you could make computational fluid dynamic.Also clarify "Time-dependent approach to the steady state","classification of quasi-linear partial differential equations","Implicit and Explicit methods","Boundary-fitted coordinate","Time and space marching".

In my opinion, this is the best book I have read in all my engineering life. The beauty of this book is in the author's ability to exactly understand what the students difficulties could possibly be and also help in removing the difficulties. NOBODY must read any other cryptic CFD book before he ventures into this superlative text. While reading this book I had a feeling of some professor standing in front of me, teaching with love in a simple and clear language. Believe me, you can finish the entire book in one sitting if you have some background in Fluid dynamics since it is downright clear, conveying and interesting.

I personally have not found a teacher better than this book.

This is a very easy book to read. Anderson not only explains the computational methods, he covers the basics and explains the relevance of the equations and terms. This book addresses the needs for people with little background on this subject. I recommend it for any novice interested in obtaining a basic introduction to CFD.

I am presently in my 4th year of a PhD in Astrophysics. While my background in the analytic portion of Fluid Dynamics is strong my understanding of how one discretizes and solves these equations numerically is somewhat lacking.

I picked this book up as a starting point to more complicated methods and found it to be, hands down, one of the best texts I have ever read. It presents the material in a concise, clear, and physically motivated fashion which makes learning the topic incredibly straightforward.

While this book is only a 'kicking off' point for more advanced techniques I think it is a must read for beginners and intermediate users. For the first timer to CFD the book will get you started down the right path armed with all the preliminary tools. For the more advanced user it will put aspects of the topic into an easier to understand light and perhaps shed more light on fundamentals that were presented poorly elsewhere.

I'd give it ten stars, it's allowed me to crack into the code I'm using and really understand why it works as well as having set me down the path to a more advanced level of understanding of CFD.

If you want to learn CFD from the beginning, you must buy this book. It is simply the BEST, and I hadn't enjoyed reading a technical book since long time ago.

This seering uncompromising volume is one of the most important books published in the past thirty years.

The many excellent chapters penned by world-class historians and analysts destroy the mendacious rationale for the welfare-warfare state, that monstrocity at war with America itself and the world.

In particular, Murray N. Rothbard's two essays, "Two Just Wars: 1776 and 1861" and "World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals" are especially crucial to understanding how this messianic drive for empire and regimentation came about.

_The Costs of War_ thoroughly examines how the US has gone from being a peaceful republic to the empire it is today. From the Civil War to the Spanish-American War and the World Wars, the essays in this volume tell you about the individuals who deliberately turned the country against its long-standing isolationist tradition, and how and why they did it.

More importantly, in keeping with its title, the book also describes the high price we've paid for the warfare state, not only in human lives, but also in damage to the economy, the culture, and especially liberty.

This book is essential for anyone who wants to understand what's going on in the world today in the context of what has gone before. The information and ideas here are extremely important, now moreso than ever, and I give the book my highest possible recommendation.

~The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories~ is a compelling and powerful anthology directed against the imperial psychosis of our times. It offers a sweeping indictment of the costs of war in terms of loss of life, the effect on morality in the aftermath, inflation, mounting debt, statism, the loss of civil liberties and economic freedom. A multitude of collaborators have contributed to this powerful anthology including John Denson, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, Robert Higgs, Justin Raimondo, Murray Rothbard, Joseph Stromberg, Clyde Wilson, et al. In the words of Justin Raimondo, the "noninterventionist movement" has been "relegated to the margins of American politics, confined to pacifists and extreme leftists, on the one hand, and extreme rightists, including libertarians as well as members of the John Birch Society, on the other." Many of my nominally conservative friends have been of the mindset that a martial obsession is a novel conservative value. However, if they study history more objectively than they will find that there is nothing particularly conservative about being "warlike" and obsessed with "militarism," particularly within the Old Right conservative tradition at home in America. The neoconservative interlopers have led them astray. Notwithstanding our present-day abandonment of the non-interventionist tradition, its roots go back deep into America history. The founding fathers enshrined their commitment to non-interventionism in the Neutrality Act of 1793. "The Great rule of conduct for us," proclaimed George Washington, "in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible... It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." Thomas Jefferson further lauded the virtue of strategic independence, in proclaiming: "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." John Quincy Adams surmised, "America does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." Some of our "monsters" in recent years whether Osama Bin Ladin or Saddam Hussain were actually considered our allies. Moreover, these "monsters" were foreign aid recipients and are actually "monsters" of our own countenance at one time. In my humble opinion, America's security lies in a foreign policy based on strategic independence and armed neutrality, not in reckless intervention abroad or in countless foreign entanglements, alliances, and commitments to international bodies like the United Nations.

Many people see the Second World War as a defining case against non-interventionism, but if they studied history more objectively than they would see how American intervention in the so called war to end all wars, the Great War, in fact paved the way for the Great Crusade in the Second World War. Woodrow Wilson's intervention in the Great War and his campaign to "make the world safe for democracy" actually served to make the world safe for both Hitler and Stalin. The seeds of Nazi Germany were planted by the forced abdication of the Kaiser and the vehement economic retribution perpetrated by the Western Allies like England and France against Germany, which only served to destabilise Germany and radicalise her body politic.

John Denson astutely surmises, "The greatest accomplishment of Western Civilization is arguably the achievement of individual liberty through limits on the power of the state. In the war-torn twentieth-century, we rarely hear that one of the main costs of armed conflict is the long-term loss of liberty to winners and losers alike." War for America, despite our overwhelming victories, has been one Pyrrhic victory after the other. "Beyond the obvious costs of dead and wounded soldiers, there is the lifetime struggle of veterans to live with their nightmares and their injuries; the hidden economic costs of inflation, debts, and taxes; and more generally the damages caused to our culture, our morality, and to civilisation at large." With this erudite anthology, Denson and many others illustrate the costs of war and the heavy toll that an imperial mindset unleashes on a nation. To encapsulate some of the brilliant content therein: Richard Gamble takes on the perennial champion of imperialism in the nineteenth-century Abraham Lincoln in a terse analysis of his sordid legacy, his war of aggression; Richard Raico sketches the costs of America's needless involvement in the Great War, in an essay entitled `World War I: The Turning Point;' Robert Higg's profound essay entitled `War and Leviathan' sketches a history of how war preparedness has led to a continual aggrandisement of power in the hands of the state while proving itself to be detrimental to freedom; and Paul Gottfried asks the most heterodox question of our time, in his essay `Is Modern Democracy Warlike?'

This book squarely challenges the prevailing myth that our sustained history of war in the twentieth-century has made us freer and secured more freedom at home. War is an engine for aggrandisement of power in the hands of state, centralisation, as well as sweeping cultural and moral changes. After WWII, Americans became acclimated to payroll withholding, a hefty income tax, and a mammoth centralised bureaucracy. Nonetheless, the idea that there is somehow salvific cleansing power in the spilt blood of the America G.I. continues to prevail. I whole-heartedly recommend this book. Thomas Woods put it best, "The Costs of War is easily one of the most important books to emerge from American conservatives in a generation." I whole-heartedly recommend this jewel, which is a reminder of the costs of war and a defender of the non-interventionist tradition which must be recovered.

Although soundly invested in the critiques provided in each of the contributions to "The Costs of War: America's Phyrric Victories," I find the refusal by Mises intellectuals to entertain extending the franchise of soldiering to the ruling classes (and even, now, to the comfortable middle classes) by way of compulsory service a hollow defense.

Mr. Stromberg (whose analysis here, as in his articles dating back many years, speaks truth to power most lucidly) himself has been heard dismissing the James Fallows assertion. To paraphrase: that until the mothers of soldiers in comfortable white suburban towns are ringing the phones off-the-hook screaming at their Congressmen "YOU KILLED MY BOY!" the lives of Fallows' working-class "Chelsea boys" will continue to be defiled in the name of state sponsored phyrric misadventures as they are marched off to slaughter.

What other than placing the incidence (costs) of warfare squarely in the laps of the decisionmaking class will stall the state-led rush to war? Surely not the scorn of intellectuals. Surely not the "mature restraint" shored up by our shuddering constitutional system, increasingly torn to shreds by means of "unitary executive" assertion. Alas, surely not the thoroughly "professionalized" "all-volunteer" armed forces, marshalled by increasingly unaccountable yes-man officers, themselves at the beck and call of revolving-door insider-intellectuals, presidents, congressmen, and captains of industry as they engage in the lapping up of the "political means to wealth"--the overwhelming majority "exempted" from their service on the battlefield.

John V. Denson edited a useful anthology that undermines the "popular history" (popular nonsense)of recent U.S. History and the rise of empire which is a term the Establishemnt does not like because empire is an honest definition. Denson chose excerpts which deal with the rapid growth of centralized government, the disintegration of constitutional rights, and an ever increasing national debt all of which is related to unnecessary war since the Civl War or the War of Southern Succession.

Denson's introductory essay is worth reading. This essay gives the reader a glimpse of the book's theme, and his essay is a good introduction to the rise of militarism in the United States since 1860. Denson's introduction presents the reader with a cause-and effect relationship between war and the erosion of rights.

The essays that examine the Civil War, especially Murray Rothbard's essay, gives a view of the Civil War that reveals that actual origins of this tragedy as opposed to the childish convention that somehow the Civil War began over the issue of slavery. Readers should note that Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson was opposed to slavery. Gen. Robert E. Lee emancipated his slaves. On the other hand, Gen. Grant had to free his slaves to take command of the Army of the Potomac. Gen. Sherman of the Union also owned slaves. As some of the essays clearly state, Pres. Lincoln antagonized the Southerners with manacing military actions especially on Virginia's border which resulted in the Virginians joining the Confederacy.

The essays dealing with World War I and World War II should be of particular interest to those not familiar with actual the origins of these wars. Textbook writers give the false impression that Pres. Wilson and U.S. authorities were neutral prior to April 6, 1917 when members of the U.S. Congress voted to declare on the Germans and their allies. The facts were that American bankers and powerful political fugures had given money and resources to the British and French espcially after 1915. Pres. Wilson had U.S. supply vessels sail into war zones to assist the British and French and to deliberately antagonize the Germans into provocation.

Murray Rothbard's essay regarding World War I is instructive. He chides Walter Lippmann for being a ferocious advocate of U.S. entry into World War I as well as a proponent of military conscription (slavery). Yet, when Mr. Lippmann realized that he was of draft age and in good health, he used his connections with Felix Frankfurter to avoid having to face angry gunfire. Lippmann's excuse was that he wanted to help shape the post World War I United States in line what the "intellectuals" thought was necessary for everyone else. Mr. Lippmann annointed himself as one of Plato's philosopher kings. This anecdote is indeed instructive. This is line with the adage that, "War hath no fury as that of the non-combatent." One should note that the current group of armchair patriots have never seen combat. Vice President Cheney had five (5) draft deferments and never saw one he did not like. Yet, he is similiar to Walter Lippmann in that Cheney wants war but never wants to face war's dangers. Lippmann and Cheney fit Andy Jacobs' descriptions of War Wimps and Chicken Hawks.

The essays dealing with the costs of war reveal that the plutocratic rich benefit from military expendatures, but the public never gets to see the bills until later when they come due. Those who prefer to remain ignorant and comfortable about the costs of war only protest when taxes and inflation damage their economic status. Yet, these folks may hold a key to stopping the war machine as suggested in one of the essays if they alerted their U.S. Senators and Representatives.

The appeal to "Demokracy" to initiate wars is ludicrous which Messers Gottfired and Hoppe make very clear. The fact is wars in the name of democracy or wars in the name of the people are the most destructive. A point well made is "Vox populi Vox Dei" applies to war. Modern political views state the voice of the public, no matter how stupid or wrong, is a substitute for reason and knowledge.

Mr. Denson's book is useful for those who are puzzled by the rise of the military state. Readers should also consult the bibliogrphy in this book. Harry Elmer Barnes' anthology titled PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE and James J. Martin's REVISIONIST VIEW POINTS are especially useful. Mr. Denson's THE COSTS OF WAR is timely and well worth reading.

I first heard a lecture by Victor Papanek about 20 years ago, shortly before this revised edition was released. He was a very impressive speaker, drawing from a seemingly bottomless well of ecological design ideas. His work has taken him far and wide and in the process allowed him to revamp many of his views on environmental design. This book is an extensively updated version of his seminal book on the subject. It has become a bit dated in the 20 years since its release, especially in regard to computer software design. But, most of the material he covers is still relavent to the present, as we have only begun to scratch the surface of sound ecological ideas.

Having read the more recent books on ecological design by Sim Van Der Ryn and William McDonough, I was surprised to see that neither mentioned Papanek, who prefigured many of the ideas they present in their current books. Papanek long ago advocated the lease/use principle, which makes much more sense in a rapidly changing technological world than does the buy/own principle that continues to dominate our social thinking. Papanek notes the many cultural and psychological blocks we have created for ourselves when it comes to ecological design, but also illustrates how we can overcome these blocks with methods such as bisociation, first proposed by Arthur Koestler. But, what really makes this book stand out are the great number of illustrations that Papanek uses to demonstrate his ideas. This is one of the most practical books written on environmental design.

While Papanek was an industrial designer, his ideas are equally germaine to the field of architecture and biology. He advocated a multi-disciplinary approach, feeling that our universities had become too compartimentalized and were stifling creativity, which needs cross-pollination in order to thrive. The book is as inpiring as his lectures. Papanek challenges the reader to explore new avenues, not continue to follow the status quo, which only results in creative dead-ends.

Papanek, like his mentor Fuller, took on a guru like status where rhetoric became more important than the reality. He bends facts and contradicts himself several places in this book.

Here are a few that jumped out at me

Misrepresentation of the facts -

Page 89 - The Hyatt collapse wasn't bad design rather the builder changed the construction and inspectors weren't doing their job.

281 - He talks about farm implement companies' negative reaction to his walking tractor proposal. Troy-Bilt Rototiller has around since 1937, was and is building a 10 HP tiller very similar to the one pictured.

Contradicts himself -

Page 6 he says, "Design must be meaningful. And meaningful replaces such semantically loaded expressions as ... "ugly"... "cute"...

Page 93 - he describes gum as "tawdry

Page 246 - He asserts that humidifiers are bad because they are "costly, ugly, and ... wasteful of water"

Granted there are a lot of dangerous, overpriced, impractical, and generally unnecessary products on the market, but except for ranting about what he considers to be wrong, he doesn't offer much in terms of direction to others who want to be socially responsible.

one of the best books on design ethics till date!

I first spotted this book while studying in Denmark last year, where my host parents had studied under Victor Papanek. I would have studied under him at the University of Kansas, if not for his untimely and unfortunate passing. This book is one of the best books on the principles and ethics of design. It illustrates both the designer's responsibility and the potential to affect real change in the world through design. This most renowned of works by Papanek focuses on industrial design in two parts: How It Is, and How It Could Be. Papanek encourages radical thinking in design, and most of the topics in the book are easily translated to architecture. To my knowledge, reading this book has never been a required part of the core curriculum at the School of Architecture and Urban Design here at KU, but in my opinion, it should be.

It has been many years since I read this important book. I hope this book will be made a compulsory read for all design students. If only more designers would adopt Mr Papanek's approach to socially-responsible design, the world will be a much better place to live in.

I'm not an expert in either Interface Design or Programming Methodology, and I've only read a little bit in these areas. As I read this book, I found myself thinking: "You mean this approach isn't standard practice already?"

After reading Ellen and Alan's description of how a UI Designer and a Developer should interact with each other, it just seems so obvious that everyone should work this way. User needs should affect architecture, and technology constrains design--how hard can it be to understand that? But the implications--design and development are iterative, and ongoing user testing is critical to the iterative process--could change the way some people think about programming projects. (The old Specify, Design, Program, Test, Release process seems somewhat naive in retrospect.)

The book has a kind of fun and lively feel to it. It's clear that the authors were having fun telling their various stories, and were excited about illustrating their points. The writing is casual, which made it amazingly easy to read.

On the other hand, once the informal style sold me on the overall approach, I almost immediately wanted a more rigorous treatment. I'd have loved an Appendix that summarized the formats of the various documents, for instance, and perhaps one that reviews the process flow diagram used at the beginning of the later chapters. (As a former academic, I found myself wondering as well about the independence and completeness of the Design Guidelines, too, but that's my quirk. It's probably not an issue most readers would care about.)

I think this book could become one of those that inspires a sort of religious commitment to its vision, and that that would probably be a very good thing.

First let me tell you this is an interaction design (or user interface design) book, since the title of the book doesn't do this job well.

This is one of the books that have great impact on me. I agree with the review written by Kevin Mullet (printed on the book's back cover) that the ideas presented in this book are a bit "dangerous". It is dangerous because they are not the common practice yet. If people want to follow these ideas, they need to have changes. Changes are always dangerous to many people.

Those "dangerous" ideas include:

- Build fewer features but build them well. (The current practice is to build as many features as possible so that marketers can list those features for promotion. Is a product easy to use? Everyone can claim that since there are no criteria for such a claim.)

- User interface design should drive the system architecture, not the other way around. (Modifying system architecture is always hard. If we want to support a certain interaction afterwards, the architecture will probably can't support cleanly, if at all.)

- Technology should be used for user needs, but not for technology's own sake. (Visual design should also be treated the same.)

Last but not least, this book shows that user interface design is actually science but not art. We don't need a graphic design degree to be an interaction designer.

As an IT project manager supporting web applications, sites and portals, this book summarizes the story of my life. Not just a must-read, but a godsend for application developers and UI designers -- two groups who traditionally don't always see eye-to-eye or face daunting communication challenges. Can't we all just get along? Yes! This book tells you how, using simple, easy-to-understand language and real-life examples. End users and customers will thank you for reading it.

I highly recommend this book as an invaluable resource for anyone currently in, or looking to enter, the instructional design field. The authors have successfully been able to present information, which can often be dry and complex, in a clear and easy to read format.

I have a read many books in this area and they have been a fantastic cure for insomnia. This on the other hand is a compelling read from start to finish. Many of the concepts presented will not be foreign to people that work in this field or in the area of product development. However the logical order and detailed examples work brilliantly to drive home the principles.

Publishers in this area should use this book as a bench mark for design and layout for its susinct and logical passage. Thank you very much Ellen and Allan for such a useful tool!

This book has many examples of good and bad web pages and also consumer products. What it covers is seemingly obvious, but apparently not realized by many. It shows how users and designers can work together for optimal result. It should be a required reading for anyone doing user-interface designs. It is good that they actually have a good free product, HUBBUB ... .that was created using this design philosophy.
I didn't give it a 5-star only because, to me, the section of their HUBBUB experience and the conclusion was too long and could have been made more concise. Also, it was disappointing to see their product not following their own design goals well enough, which seemed to make the book less effective.