Akers Books

While reading this book, I was satisfied with it and learned valuable information. However, once a good friend of mine - who is a criminology professor at Towson University - gave me a copy of Cullen and Agnew's book titled, "Criminological Theory: Past to Present," I quickly became somewhat disappointed with Akers' book. Even though I did aquire valuable information from Akers' book, in comparison I felt the Cullen and Agnew book was much better organized and much more thorough.

Criminological theories is a well written book on theories, evaluations, and applications. The chapter I found most interesting was on Deterrence of Criminal Behavior. The delivery time on this book was exceptional. I would order from this company again.

This book has a lot of promise, but fails to deliver. Most currently debated theories are covered in this text, but none except social learning theory receives adequate consideration. Akers presents only modified, interpreted versions of the most important foundational works in the field. This would definitely not be a book for beginners, and anyone seeking a solid basis for knowledge should look elsewhere.

Akers is primarily a social learning theorist, so (big surprise) every theory in the book is essientially boiled down to show how it is really social learning theory by another name. He also pays insufficient attention to the new theoretical trends in the field, which again is no real surprise. I would advise anyone seeking a good understanding of criminological theory to avoid this book. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to have a professor require it for a class, ask for suggestions about supplemental readings and take this one with a grain of salt. It's so slanted that you could roll marbles off of it.

I purchased this book while planning a trip to San Francisco and Northern California. I planned my trip around all of the great bookstores that I wanted to visit, and it worked out well. There may have been other stores that I should have visited in each particular area, but I feel the book represents the best of the best. It is impossible to list every single retail location that sells books, and it seems that is exactly what the other person reviewing this book wants. Either that, or the author of the review is a bookseller that was left off the list.

I had a fantastic time in Mendcino visiting the Gallery Bookshop. I plan to visit City Lights every time I visit San Francisco in the future. A bookstore is indeed the heart of a community, and thanks to First and Foremost I feel a deep and intimate connection with the communties I visited.

A very flawed book. It should advertise itself for what it is - a commercial advertisement for its membership list and not as a bookstore guide. I feel swindled as if I bought a logo t-shirt (paying for the privelage to advertise for an unknown other).

The book had the following flaws:
1) VERY incomplete listing of bookstores in the SF area not to mention the rest of California. The most notable lack of listings were the independent bookstores of the Mission District. Further, antiquarian dealers were left out as well. I could understand if they gave a complete list of bookstores with no ratings thereby letting the reader have a chance to explore and judge but the complete exclusion of so many independent book stores and dealers from even being listed was very odd;

2) No maps. The organization is simply by town with no maps of large book buying districts. It would have been nice to have a map of the SF area to give the reader an idea of where the bookstores are located in relation to each other and the reader. The general breakdown by large California geography chunks e.g.,Sierra Nevada does not induce one to go walking around town;

3) The book's subtitle, 'A Guide to Northern California's Independent Bookstores' is deceptive. It lulls one into the expectation that this book will give a comprehensive listing of ALL independent book stores, but instead gives fawning endorsements of its membership. I am still curious how one can be an independent northern California bookstore located in Arizona (mayhaps having NCIBA membership helps);

There were some saving graces. The section on Berkeley's book stores was reasonable. But if the book gives such short shrift to the rest of the Bay Area should I not think that the Berkeley section is flawed as well?

One of the great pleasures in life is finding the heart of any town through its book stores. Trying to track down that elusive pre 1920's Sinclair Lewis or even a 1982 reprint of Charles Babbage's analysis of manufacturing methods makes one know the smells, thoughts, desires and fears of a town and its inhabitants. A good guidebook is the starting point of a long love affair between the subject and the exploring reader. This guidebook by Akers is phone sex - short, cheap and incomplete.

Hmmn... I didn't hate this book. It was fairly well written, not necessarily historically correct. I was moderately entertained, and moderately annoyed with our hero. It's all fine and well to have him behaving like a jerk to move the story along, but I got tired of reading about it. On the other hand, there were wonderful, romantic parts that even made me cry. So, it was just OK.

This book describes the Aptian--Maastrichtian ammonites from Texas. Good idea on paper, but the result suffers from the poor quality of the photographs (copied from different sources). On another hand, the text is authoritative, most of the important taxa are described. However, important biogeographic and biostratigraphic information is missing and species quickly mentioned in tables are not discussed in the text. Let's hope a second version improves this soon.

This book has pros and cons galore.

Pro: It is filled with an abundance of information relating to trigonometry and border-line physics. Con: There is no real emphasis on method used or relationalism. Pro: There are plenty of practice exercises and problems to help the diligent reader gain experience and ability. Con: Only the odd-numbered questions are answered and with very little detail and no method. Pro: Reference section and appendix for Trig. Tables, geometric facts, and metric system. Con: Language and vocabulary used is quite advanced and complicated. Final result: Unless you're a dedicated mathematician who enjoys mystery and deciphering, I would recommend you begin with a lighter introduction to trigonometry.

This book, "T/S 2068 Basic and Beyond" by Sharon Zardetto Aker, covers BASIC only. Although with a title like "and beyond" you might expect some machine language coding, you will not find any within these pages at all. Also, there are no long programs in this book. If you are looking for some then you will have to look elsewhere. This book DOES have plenty of example code, but there is no last chapter with a program to help you pull it all together.

The Table of Contents is broken down very well (and covers seven pages!). Here is a list of the chapters (without all of the extra details that are covered the book):

Chapter 1 - Basics Plus
Chapter 2 - Numbers
Chapter 3 - Strings
Chapter 4 - Techniques
Chapter 5 - Graphics
Chapter 6 - Functions
Chapter 7 - More Graphics
Chapter 8 - Truth and Logic
Chapter 9 - Sound
Chapter 10 - Peek and Poke
Chapter 11 - More Techniques
Chapter 12 - Annotated Programs
Appendix A - Character Codes
Appendix B - Defined Graphics Data
Appendix C - Sound
Index

If you have the T/S 2068 User Manual, then much of this material is already covered. This book does go more in-depth (as the "beyond" title suggests), but it never seems to pull everything together into a cohesive whole. On the plus side, the program listings are easy to read and the text is easy to follow.

If you don't understand the two SAM guides, then this book is probably for you, as it starts off easy and builds up, one BASIC keyword at a time.

Received this book and decided to return it immediately.
There are 39 chapters in this 357-page book. So you get less than 10 page per chapter. For each chapter, there are average 4-5 pages of question with blanks for your answers!
I am looking for a book with solid statistical concepts with corresponding S-plus scripts, not summaries and questions. This book will be good for a statistical teacher looking for a question book.