Anderson Books

Wow! For someone like me who could never get into technical articles and books about the Internet, Ralf Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes is as refreshing as a cool breeze in Death Valley.

I found myself thinking I was one of the characters in the novel waking up in EA-RA and sitting down for breakfast wondering what new insights, digital or otherwise, waited to be revealed to me that day. It made me think what different ideas I might have come up with if I had been sitting down at the table with the Golden Skyers.

I read 8W8 on a flight from New York City to LA. I was doing the Okay Fellow trip in reverse. It was almost spooky as when I began looking down and trying to put myself in his position. I began wondering what it was that I was seeing. All of a sudden, I realized that I had always had a nagging feeling that what I had been seeing wasn't really what it appeared to be. By the time we circled in from the ocean into LAX, I had stopped thinking LA as a basin and, instead, I was seeing it as a huge mountain with a large base rising higher than Everest. I remember thinking it was a good thing that the pilot was back in Web 2, because we might have crashed right into that mountain.

Before 8W8, I had never understood the future of the Internet so clearly and what it meant to me personally or the world in particular.

R. Arnold

"8W8 Global Space Tribes" leads us trough a flattened pre-Columbian InterWorld which defines the next metamorphosis of the Internet Web 3, and perhaps beyond. Rather than following a convoluted trail through a multidimensional world, the writer brings us to one spot, a vortex where all aspects of our physical world come together; where each individual identifies her or himself as a member of a tribe. Members of these tribes can be living in the Amazon, the Urals or Nebraska, however, more than a common mindset knits these tribes together: they share a common weltanschauung.

Using the clever device of a helicopter (8W8 Heli), resources, markets and capital flow can be mapped like rain water forming rivulets; then streams, rivers and, ultimately oceans. For me as a businessperson and a fan of new technologies, this book has been awesome since it reveals what, hithertofore, had been invisible... the "Golden" flow.

Ralf Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes goes beyond the concept of a flat
world, it draws the reader into a virtual "What if?" reality. What if
the Internet could be used to erase national borders and
ethno-cultural divides creating entirely new social systems... global
space tribes!

Taking a ride in Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes' Helicopter is more
than experiencing the Web 3.0 envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee as "an
overlay of scalable vector graphics (with) everything rippling and
folding and looking misty:" it's entering a 5-D world where Time and
Space serve as connective tissue further compressing an already
flattened world.

Eschewing technical jargon that could alienate the average
non-techgeek, Hirt, instead, introduces the reader to 15 individuals
who call themselves the Golden Sky. They are an IT think tank composed
of international business people, lawyers, politicians,
environmentalists, a musician, a doctor and a philosopher, all of whom
share one thing in common--a futuristic vision of the future. They come
together on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the home of one of their
members, Winston Chee, an IT entrepreneur, for a week-long break out
in which they intend to focus on an IT conundrum: how to make the
invisible, visible.

The author cleverly uses the house, itself, as a living entity that,
in many ways, embodies many of the same elements as their quest.
Called EA-RA, it is a six-story mansion built into the side of a
mountain. It's exterior is a semicircular sheet of black glass infused
with golden fiber which faces south and stretches in a semicircle 180
degrees from east to west. The effect is that it not only catches the
sunrise but the setting sun as well, all the while reflecting the
sun's rays like a golden mirror. Unseen and undetected from outside is
the vast interior which encloses a self-sustaining environment
including a farm on its ground floor, the entire panoply and
requisites of a modern spa and convention center on the the five top
floors, all of which are hidden from view to the outside observer.

The hero of the piece is a San Francisco based IT journalist called
Oskar Kiernan Feller, or more commonly called by his friends, O.K.
Fellow. He is probably a manifestation of the author, himself,
conflicted and driven. It is O.K. Fellow whom we first meet as he sits
in an airplane flying from San Francisco to an IT conference in
Berlin. It is a trip he has made many times in the past, but on this
trip he is gripped with a sense of anxiety. He has flown millions of
miles without an incident, but his mind has made a calculation that at
some point there had to be a "statistical fluctuation" which might
result in...? He tries to stop thinking about it by repeating a mantra
silently to himself.

Ultimately, somewhere over St. Louis he experiences an existential
moment when he begins to question what he is seeing. That results in a
dialectical switch where, for a moment, he is watching himself trying
to find like-minded individuals among the houses and buildings below.
We are introduced to all the main characters in the first two
chapters. Except for their different vocations, they all share the
same uneasiness as O.K. Fellow. They want to see the unseen elements
of their world. For some, it's a search to find people as
themselves,for the others, it is to be able to see the actual flow of
elements into streams and rivers which make up what they call "Global
Space Tribes."

Eventually, they develop the concept of a virtual helicopter which
they imagine could hover above the earth with an instrument panel.
This tool could discern hidden values from single elements to
concentrations of elements, "mountains," as they eventually see them.

This is a fast and enjoyable read for both the lay reader as well as
the technophile.

This book is no longer in print but is available directly from the authors in electronic form (PDF file). See their web site and contact them via email.

This book provides many excellent C examples and techniques in array manipulation, pointers and some other techniques. Very good reference for professional programmer.

It takes you through the rough edges of C in great detail unlike other "highly rated" books which merely presents concepts. Discussion on RTE, compact pointer experessions are a special treat. It makes you look at C with a "compiler perspective", a must for an advanced background. Recommended for everyone who likes C and wants to get serious!!

I have software that uses the Advantage database and I needed ADS specific information to write a front end for customized data access. This book really delivered for me. The authors seem to have a real passion for ADS and, like most things in life, this results in a high-quality product.

There is concise but informative stuff about general database structure that quickly progresses on to ADS-specific structure and great ADO.NET information. I learned more about real life ADO.NET from this book than I did from trudging through Visual Studio's help.

It's one of those books that just left me feeling extremely good about my decision to buy.

If you're looking for a definitive resource for Advantage, look no further. This book covers everything in great detail- with some very detailed examples.

The Advantage Database Server (ADS) is a relational database system now owned by Sybase. It's a rather interesting database in that it uses an ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) structure rather than the now more traditional SQL structure. In my opinion it is a system suitable for applications that have outgrown Microsoft Access, but which do not need the full power (and complexity) of the big databases such as Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server.

This book is written by two ADS pros that have an almost missionary zeal in promoting ADS. Still they have done a pretty good job of describing the various ways of getting data into and out of ADS. This includes the ADS GUI, using QBuilder (like the MS Access QBE), and of course writing in SQL itself. The ADS SQL is more advanced than the Jet engine in Access incorporating things like logic that are not supported in Jet. Finally there is a section on using ADS with various languages such as PHP, Delphi, .NET and more.

All in all, this is a complete and well written book on ADS that gives a good introduction to ADS.

This book is cutting edge material and deals with real up to date issues. It gives you a womans' perspective on the emotional stress that they must endor dealing with their outlook on society, their standards, their security, and the social status of the men in their lives. Renay keeps it real on this one. As a man, you can finally understand a womans point of view. This could be a great film production.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It was entertaining, real-to-life, and emotionally satisfying. I was able to identify with these two women, and I think a lot of others will do so as well. I was actually sad when there was no more to read! Sequel! Sequel!

This is book is fun, fresh, and full of excitement. I read the whole thing the first day I got it! I could'nt put it down! One of my friends told me about Renay's book and I figured I would support her, but I had no idea the book would be this entertaining. Good job Renay! I look forward to reading more books from you. thanks Gina for telling me about the book, now i'm going to tell all of my friends.

Anderson provides an enlightening and accessible look at the multitude of changes taking place today that are usually characterized by the word 'globalization'. As he so clearly points out, these changes are not merely economic, although such changes are important, but also political, cultural and biological. This broader framework is likely to be important to those who would better understand (and perhaps alter) the course of globalization.

Anderson notes that nations are increasingly losing their closed character (and becoming more open), a development exemplified by the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In consequence of this, individual nations have less control over their economic, political, cultural and biological dimensions, and there is an increased need for associations of nations. It should be noted, however, that Anderson is skeptical about the likelihood of the emergence of global government.

A particularly useful part of Anderson's book is the classification of attitudes toward globalization that he presents in Chapter 12 ("Global Visions and Divisions"). They are: the globalist right; the globalist left; the antiglobalist right; and the antiglobalist left. With this classification in hand, one can better grasp the discomfort many people feel with the process of globalization, as well as why some people are working so hard to advance it.

What Anderson does, therefore, is develop a more nuanced view of what globalization is and a more nuanced view of individual responses to globalization. He makes globalization more complex, but it is surely not something to be addressed in a simple-minded fashion.

Walter Anderson's gift is to synthesize and explicate complex social issues in an intelligible, readable, and coherent manner. There is not a lot of news in this book. It is a fine overview of the complexities of globalization and all the different ways it manifests itself in our lives. It pulls together a lot of information on the ways in which our world is changing, how this change effects us, and how we effect the process of change.

Anderson also provides an overview of how people are thinking about and conceptualizing our changing, globalizing world. In short, it is an excellent primer or introduction to the processes of globalization and how people are responding to it. It is not a ponderous academic tome, but it does have a bibliography that you can use as a springboard for further explorations.

It helped me to get a handle on a lot of materials and information I was familiar with, but never had the time to read, study, and think about systematically.

One thing which I found helpful was the symbolic references to the Treaty of Wesphalia which ended the 30 years war in the 17th Century. It marks the transition from the world of the Holy Roman Empire to the world of the sovereign nation state. The current era is post-Wesphalian in that the boundaries that defined nation states are becoming more permeable and oftentimes irrelevant. Environmental, medical, economic, political and social problems do not begin and end at national borders, hence new ways of thinking and new forms of global governance are emerging to deal with these problems. Our post 9-11 world has seen efforts to strengthen national boundaries in response to a globalized threat, but it only affects a small part of the globalization process.

Another thing is the intersecting dimensions of Globalist-antiglobalist and political left-political right continuums. This could be conceived as a four fold table: globalist-left, globalist-right, antiglobalist-left, antiglobalist-right. I prefer to think of it as an x-y axis that defines a two dimensional grid.

This categorization scheme captures some of the ambiguities and paradoxes of responses to globalism. Anderson uses it to explain different perspectives offered by various writers and actions by various activists. It also helps me understand my own conflicted feelings about globalization (free markets, immigration, multi-culturalism, global warming, the aids epidemic, etc.)

Ultimately All Connected Now is a good place to start thinking about globalization. If you have already been thinking about globalization, this is a good place to pause and review your thinking, and the thoughts other's have had, about globalization.

The day I read the title of this book, my fears of the last 30 years were gone. It was stating the obvious, so obvious that not many managed to grasp it. Since humankind started to record history 5500 years ago and maybe long before, we are living in the First Global Civilisation. A civilisation that spans the planet and already goes beyond with human space missions, satellites, probes and robots.

It started with Columbus and global travel. Then this new civilisation which was born thanks to long distance communication (telegraph in the 19th century, later phone, telex, fax, internet) is reshaping our lives in different ways: at home, in cities, in our workplace, in our environment, in our information, in our bio-information, in the perception we have from ourselves.

In this perspective one understands the meaning of the 20th century, a transition between a set of civilisations gradually conquered by the West that took their independance but that remained connected into a global civilisation with multiple centers influencing each other.

We are a sentient specie (author calls us a global animal) rather than an American, an European, a Japanese and our problems are not national problems but global or human problems.

Global civilisation because it allows us to have a global vision of our planet (remember this picture taken from the Moon in 1969 showing Earth as a blue oasis in the middle of nowhere), to realize we have an ecosystem to which our survival is attached, to see the multiplicity of our beliefs and religions, the interraction of cultures, those who accept an open society and take ideas from abroad and those who refuse and fight against it. Sometimes the same people but on different subjects.

Global civilisation does not only have states (more than 200 ranging from tiny Monaco or Vatican to US, Canada, Russia, India and China), NGOs (US Aid, Red Cross, ... ) but 400 international organisations including the UN, NATO, ASEAN, the Arab League and the European Union, 38,000 transnational or global corporations (global because because they adapted to the environment faster than others), non-state actors (billionaires, drugs lords, terrorists), religions (many with the biggest being Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism all calling for more than 1 billion members), citizens as individuals or organised in communities and organisations. All those interract to form our present world.

It does have an informal governance, a reunion of different spheres of the global civilisation but no global government (note: civilisations with multiple polities and no centralized government are numerous in the past: Mesopotamia, Greece, Mayan civilisation, Western Europe, India and China for some periods of their history).

This global civilisation triggers reactions, vision and divisions: anti-globalization, environment movements, labour movements, etc...

Although some author opinions will not be shared by everybody, it is concise, clear, well-written, easy to understand and easy to make its own opinion about the event we are all living today. Vision about life, job, travel, environment, foreign relations will be changed for ever. A true paradigm shift that makes sense of the last decades and removes the anguish felt by many in front of this changing and sometimes crual society. Once read, you feel just like a kid which became familiar to his new house. And more, you are astonished you did not realize it earlier while it was so obvious.

Recipes are traditional and easy. The book is structured in such a fashion so as to promote use in various social events.

Great for a novice like myself. Recipes are absolutely delicious! Lots of ideas such as Apricot Chicken, a spectacular meatloaf, baked apple pork chops, and all kinds of yummy desserts and snacks! Humorous and informal.

This is a great cookbook! The recipes are straight forward and simple, but taste wonderful. It would be a nice wedding shower gift because it discusses the basics of cooking.

This is a good collection. It is a text book and has the limitations of a text book (once again we get Metamorphosis, Incident at Owl Creek Bridge, The Tell Tale Heart, The Death of Ivan Illich, and so on). That being said this editor makes a strong effort to include lesser known work and writers from underrepresented groups of people. The chief thing recommending it is the fact that it features commentaries by the writers themselves about fiction and about the process of writing rather than a lot of dull critical analysis. Also the bios of the authors are well written and informative. I recommend this for teachers or for anybody who would like a broad cross-section of short fiction. One other thing worth noting is that the editor seems sincere, down to earth and intelligent rather than academic or pedantic.

What a great book of short stories. I find myself feeling the lives of each short story.

I use this text in my American Literature course. It is quite useful because it not only has great stories by great authors, but it also has commentary often by the authors themselves about their work. It also has other great critics commenting on the stories, and the short story in general, in a separate section at the end of the book. even if you are not a teacher or a student, this is a great collection of American short stories to read.

This is an excellent beginner's law book. This is also helpful for accountants preparing to take their CPA exam. This book has side references on questions and parts that have been used on the CPA exam. I highly recommend keeping this book as a basic easy to read and follow reference tool for legal issues concerning corporate entities.

This book is a must have for anyone interested in learning more about Business Law. The book utilizes real life cases, giving you perspective into the every changing world of law. I give this book 5 stars. It's a must have.

This is an excellent compendium of the major subject areas
taught in a business law course. The book has a fair coverage
of legal rights, government regulatory processes,contracts,
personal property, sales, commercial paper, creditor rights,
agency and employment, partnerships, corporations, real property,
the Uniform Commercial Code and an index. The work presents
typical case studies utilizing the classic factual patterns and
the decision. There are important case studies contained
for student homework assignments and class participation.
The work is edited by some important CPA Review giants like
Dr. Fox -famous for his rendition of the CPA law review.
It is a worthy purchase for anyone studying business law or
sitting for the CPA Examination.

The work is easy to read considering the complexity of some
of the topics discussed. i.e. HDC (holder in due course)
The grammar and sentence structure are very readable for students.

This is a great book for pathology residents (and other medical specialties). Although an updated edition is needed - it is still a great foundation.

Being a second year medical student, the only text that my instructors seem to know about is Robbins. Robbins is a nice text I do admit, but I find it lacking in clarity and compact to the point of confusion. Anderson's (while I admit, comes in 2 volumes and weighs 20 pounds it seems) explains all! It fills in all the gaps (which I much admit are large) which Robbins creates. A nice feature of this text is an abundance of gross pictures, simple charts that list different tumor locations and their incidences, and the highlights of molecular biology without telling minutiae like the particular part of a chromosome arm that a gene is located on. I'm only getting started! In summary, if you're a pathology resident or medical student who wishes to clear a great mist of confusion surrounding pathology, then get this text! Not only will you learn pathology, but you'll increase your upper body strength carrying around this great tome!

The best medical pathology text in the market. It is a complete text that is unsurpassed for pathology. Although it is large it is easy reading inside and gives you a full understanding. If you want to learn medicine, read it!

Purchased for our 10 year old daughter, she has not put it down. The stories are touching and funny and intense. Good quick read!

Updated and revised to include a new introduction, ANGEL ANIMALS gathers stories about spiritual lessons they've learned from animals and comes not from new age leaders but from ordinary individuals, making for an even more powerful collection. From a sparrow's influence on volunteering to animals who promoted spiritual growth, ANGEL ANIMALS is an outstanding survey for any who would reveal the underlying importance of animals.

We all have our own anecdotes about how important our animal friends are to each of us. In some small (or large) ways we have all experienced the miracles of angel animals. In daily life they teach us patience, show us unconditional love, and expect us to be nothing less than ourselves with them at all times. In times of crisis, they stand beside us reminding us that we are stronger and more courageous than we think. In short, they change our lives, for the better. Animals really are pretty amazing creatures.

Angel Animals is an anthology of animal experiences that changed the lives of various individuals. The types of animals and the dynamics of these relationships vary substantially as do the lessons learned and the gifts given by these beings. As expected household pets are common heroes and heroines in these stories. However, in quite a number of the entries, the animals depicted are quite out of the ordinary including seals, raccoons, bees, and spiders. In all cases, these creatures bring with them special gifts and lasting lessons that guided their humans through very difficult or challenging times.