Boone Books

I didn't want to know them and most romance novels make me yearn to meet the characters. I wouldn't recommend this at all. If you like shorter reads with more emotional depth, I'd recommend Peggy Herring.

This book should have been titled "Java Essentials for C and C++ Bashing". The author starts in the introduction with "...think of this book as a superconducting supercollider [which] takes C/C++, positions it in a bubble chamber, and then hurls Java at it....".

I expected to see an insightful guide showing the similarities between C++ and Java - so as to instruct the C++ programmer's intuition to make Java obvious and natural.

I saw an author who learned C++ without making the paradigm shift to objects - in the author's own words "C++ enables you to define and create objects, but that's as far as the language and its libraries go". The author literally sees C++ as no more than C with Classes - from the introduction "The early chapters show you the paradigm shifts you'll make when programming in Java rather than in C and C++". Had the author read Stroustrup's book "The Design and Evolution of C++", this book on Java might have turned out better.

Instead of using C++ as an aid by showing the similarities to Java, the author seeks to maximize the differences. For example, instead of comparing Java object variables to the similar concept of C++ reference variables, the author compares them to C++ pointer variables. In the "Hello, World!" example, Java's main() is declared to be superior to that of C/C++. In another example, Java code that is supposedly equivalent to some C++ code is actually enhanced in order to show Java's "ease of development" for subsequently integrating a graphics interface. There is also a "my libraries are better than your libraries" game - in one example the author says "The major difference is, of course, that C++ does not define a base class called Object in the C++ libraries".

To the book's credit, it does spend some time on Java's Graphics and Web capabilities, as do most of the newer Java books. Even so, the author points out what he sees as assumed deficiencies in C and C++ (at he beginning of chapter 6 [Text-Based Applications] the author says "Chapters 7 [Graphical Applications] and 8 [Applets on the Web] are based on graphical user interfaces, so they don't have C or C++ examples that correspond directly").

I cannot say that this author is a Java evangelist since that would imply that he had a good understanding of how Java really compares to other object oriented languages. Instead, he will have to be relegated to the Java bigot heap.

Whatever else this book is, it is not "...for C and C++ Programmers" - I have to recommend a NO BUY for this book.

I found the book an easy read and the examples very reader friendly. He spends a lot of time and detail explaining the migration of code syntax, in straight forward examples and helps the reader move into OOP concepts. The book could easily be subtitled "Transitioning to OOP for old C guys".

Sticking with the platform-independent nature of the JAVA language, Mr. Boone tries to be non-platform specific, yet in doing so somehow comes across as anti-Microsoft, which I'm finding out is quite popular in books on JAVA. Bottom line, since I own a copy of Microsoft's Visual J++, I found some of the examples hard to get working. This was a bit fustrating, but learned a lot more about VJ++ in the process. I got a sense that if I had a SUN computer, the examples would work flawlessly.

Once Mr. Boone gets through the easy examples, "Hello World", goes inta, goes outa, classes, etc., he kind of blows through several applications and implimentations, some of which could be useful. By then, I was ready for a book that went deeper in to the lanugage.

Although I found the book to be tailor made for the likes of me, I do not think it is an obvious choice for beginning or advancing one's understanding of the language. For me, it accomplished exactly what the title states.

I'll admit it right now. Critiquing a bio-pic (at least that's what it felt like) of Daniel Boone for racism is like shooting fish in a barrel. A biography of Mr. Boone written today would have a mightily difficult time giving Native Americans any real depth or character. Now consider a Daniel Boone book written in the 1940s, and you see just how badly, how racist, and how cruel a children's book can be. I could go through this book chapter by chapter and pull out every instance of anti-"Indian" sentiment and place it before you in a huff. Instead, I'm just going to copy down here a section from the book that, to my mind, sums up the Native American feeling perfectly. This section describes an attack on an Indian village:

"...I saw some warriors run into a house, until I counted forty-six of them. We pursued them until we got near the house, when we saw a squaw sitting in the door, and she placed her feet against the bow she had in her hand, and then took an arrow, and raising her feet she drew with all her might and let fly at us and she killed a man, whose name I believe was Moore. He was a lieutenant and his death so enraged us all that she was fired on, and had at least twenty balls blown through her...We now shot them like dogs; and then set the house on fire, and it burned it up with the forty-six warriors in it. I recollect seeing a boy who was shot down near the house. His arm and thigh were broken, and he was so near the burning house that the grease was stewing out of him. In this situation he was still trying to crawl along; but not a murmur escaped him though he was only about twelve years old. So sullen is the Indian when his dander is up that he had sooner die than make a noise, or ask for quarters".

I could say something snarky in response to this passage, but I think it speaks for itself. Now, to be fair, this is a section quoted in the book itself from "The Autobiography of David Crockett" by an unnamed woodsman. But it appears as part of the narrative of this story and it is never challenged in any way. Great reading for the kiddies, eh? Especially when the book later goes on to state that the Native Americans were a dying race whose members, "met the personal tragedy of violent death with a serene indifference". Forgive me if passages like this make me mad.

The book follows Boone's life from birth (in the 1730s) to his death (in 1820). It displays him finding paths into Kentucky, getting captured many many times, and killing "Indians" left and right. You see his family members get slaughtered and his defense of the white settler forts. Sadly, the book is rather dull in its passages. Homestead life, as told here, is less interesting than anything found in your average "Little House on the Prairie" tale. In fact, the most interesting aspects of this book are the fights against the "Indians". But Daugherty wants it both ways. Even though he consistently refers to Native Americans as "varmints", "red", and "savages" he is considerate enough to note that some "Indians" aren't bad. He names the Native Americans by their tribes when he can. Oddest of all, Daugherty includes a long passage from Henry Beston's, "American Memory" in which a Seneca named Red Jacket decries the betrayal of his people by the white settlers. The passage is moving and heartfelt and, to be frank, utterly out of place in a book that celebrates the genocide of an entire race. It's almost as if Daugherty wanted to show the other side of the story. Instead, it's just a glimpse of the truth muffled under a book of lies, half-truths, and myths.

How much is actually known to be true about Boone is hard to say. And it's not as if Daugherty has included source notes with his tale. In any case, this book cannot be considered non-fiction. Too often does the author say what Boone is thinking, dreaming, or planning. Half the tales could be complete fabrications for all we know. The accompanying illustrations look like nothing so much as modified Thomas Hart Bentons. Men have rippling, almost grotesque, muscles and women sport overlarge feet and bosoms.

All in all, this book is woefully out of date and a sad testament to a style of writing that was once so prevalent. The only reason this book is even remembered today is because of its unfortunate Newbery Award. It's a sad case and an even sadder piece of writing. As a historical document into the racism and Manifest Destiny mode of thought once (and perhaps still) so prevalent in America, it's a striking testament. In all other ways, it's a relic and should be treated as such.

Appropriate emphasis is put on Boone's important role in the opening up and settlement of Kentucky. Boone proved to be the ideal man for this time. The author's style, vigorous and simple like the subject's life conveys the pioneer spirit and suggests the frontier speech without reproducing the idiom in tedious detail. The lithographs of pioneers and Indians--done in black, brown and forest green--enhance the epic proportions of the narrative.