Burke Books

As a Solaris admin I have little knowledge of Oracle. I really did not want to know much either. However, I must know something of it's design and layout. I also need to know what services/daemons do what. However, all the books I found covered Oracle on NT/2000. Who in their right mind would do such a thing! Anyway, this book as sufficient coverage of Oracle on Solaris that it helped get me up to speed on Oracle enough to understand an Oracle DBA when they speak!

This is a typical Que effort, probably written in about 4 days, by paraphrasing pre-existing materials, including documentation you receive with the software. Also not updated for 8i, they added a few paragraphs at the beginning about new features, but didn't work through those features in the rest of the book. Poorly indexed, poorly edited (both as to explanations and # typos), way too many screen shots, just way too big.

This book is probably one of the best book I have in my personal Oracle Library. Very well explained examples, good detail on Oracle Architecture, Management and database administration. Author has done a good job. If you are looking to become an Oracle application developer "you are wasting your time" this book is more for intermediate level person or if you have some exposure to Oracle then you will understand what author is trying to explain. Other books you might want to take a look is "Oracle 8i DBA Handbook" very similar contents.

This is a wonderful book which covers all the aspects of Oracle, including all the interfaces with Oracle. A really excellent book for DBAs and Programmer Analysts. It helped me a lot in understanding DBA part. Am excellent Que publication. I appreciate the structure and contents of the book

Granted...I am a junior DBA but this book is very good at presenting the basics with enough detail that I would definitely recommend it over many other general Oracle DBA books (including the Handbook by Oracle Press). It really helped in spelling out the exact steps to creating a database as well as installing Oracle (which for some reason many books neglect). With that said, whether you use this book or another book, it is a good idea to also purchase topic specific books (eg. Backup and Recovery, Tuning, etc.) when more detail is needed.

It's sad that this book has gotten such poor reviews. I tore through the entire thing cover-to-cover and was riveted the entire time. What others see as weakness I see as a strength of the book: you come away knowing not only Johannes Peter Wagner but also Fred Clarke, Deacon Philippe, Tommy Leach, Barney Dreyfuss, and many others. The book takes you on the journey of Honus The Ballplayer, from the early days through each year he played, chronicling not only his ups & downs but also the fortunes of the Pirates teams of those early years along with the city itself. If people were expecting some tabloid revelations about illicit dealings or some scandalous dirt it reveals their own failings, not the book's. Remember, this is the guy who insisted his tobacco card be pulled (the famous T206) because he had moral objections about peddling cigarettes to kids. So enjoy the book as a great period-piece about the people, places, and times of that early 20th-century baseball era. It really is a treat.

Wow, reading the reviews, this is a tough crowd! Too much detail, not enough detail. For me, the detail was just about right. I have been listening to the unabridged audio edition while commuting. The book covers Wagner's career starting in his teen-age years. It provides a good illustration of American life at the turn of the century particularly as it related to baseball. I was especially interested to learn how many of the western PA towns I grew up around had had their own minor league ball teams back in the day - Sharon, New Castle, Warren (PA), etc. I think the authors did a good job of marching the reader through Wagner's career including the highs and the lows while also teaching about the early days of professional baseball and how the sport quickly became America's pastime.

I see some tough criticism on this page, but I cannot accept that the book has too much baseball detail. When I think of other, more recent biographies of Whitey Ford, Gabby Hartnett, and others that read like a series of several hundred box scores in prose, I think of this book as just the opposite. It paints a good picture of Wagner the man and his family, and how he spent his non-baseball hours and seasons. It retells good anecdotes in proper context, and as my fellow reviewer, Eddie Waddell notes, it doesn't try to gloss over any weaknesses the man may have had - a fault of so many baseball biographers whose goal is to get their man into the Hall of Fame by their book's building up his stats.

The de Valerias obviously love their man, and you will too before you are done with the volume. Just the right amount of baseball detail, I'd say. And not just about Honus. You learn a great deal about his lesser known teammates. And the stats are almost always on target. The de Valerias may not have included a Wagner stats sheet, but at least they seem to have researched all stats they use in the book well. Yes, I wish the footnotes were more specific to the quotes, but that shouldn't deter the majority of readers.

This work is useful for the baseball fan interested in the game's history. An enjoyable read but it falls prey to a critical error in any baseball biography -- it fails to include Wagner's career statistics. Not that you can't find them elsewhere, but most folks reading baseball history (such as myself) will want to leaf through and check out the stats as they read the narrative.

One lapse in the DeValerias' work is the preparation of their bibliography, which is incomplete, failing to list many works cited later under chapter sources. An examination of the bibliography, therefore, provides future researchers with a very incomplete picture of the extent of their work. Moreover, they eschew footnotes in favor of a general listing of sources for each chapter. Trying to pinpoint the source of the authors' conclusions or a particular quotation, consequently, is virtually impossible, and weighing the number of sources they used to establish a point even more frustrating. The result is often the impression that a thin foundation of a single quotation or story supports many of the DeValerias' conclusions.

I found this textbook to be difficult to read and understand, not a problem I normally have. The authors use concepts that are not introduced and discussed until later in the book. Overall, a poor choice for a first college-level textbook on physics.

I've used this book for the 3-semester intro to physics sequence taught at San Francisco State and have been thoroughly pleased with it. Basic principles and key concepts are heavily emphasized. The authors tend to de-emphasize memorizing derived formulae (which leads to plug-and-chug problem solving) and focuses on breaking down a problem into its basic elements, which is in my opinion the best way to approach problems in physics. Some might find the math a bit rigorous for introductory physics but it's the same math as in Giancoli or Tipler which is just calculus (some differential equations is used later in the text but so does the others). This is not a "learn by example" text, since the examples tend to emphasize additional elements of the concepts (usually by showing some of the math techniques) but the text does show well thought out outlines to solving problems. It really has given me an excellent foundation in physics.

I've used this book for the 3-semester intro to physics sequence taught at San Francisco State and have been thoroughly pleased with it. Basic principles and key concepts are heavily emphasized. The authors tend to de-emphasize memorizing derived formulae (which leads to plug-and-chug problem solving) and focuses on breaking down a problem into its basic elements, which is in my opinion the best way to approach problems in physics. Some might find the math a bit rigorous for introductory physics but it's the same math as in Giancoli or Tipler which is just calculus (some differential equations is used later in the text but so does the others). This is not a "learn by example" text, since the examples tend to emphasize additional elements of the concepts (usually by showing some of the math techniques) but the text does show well thought out outlines to solving problems. It really has given me an excellent foundation in physics.

This is a poor choice for a lower division physics course. The authors' writing style is not particularly clear and often difficult to read, not to mention DRY. Nothing in this text inspired any interest in the subject matter. Come on! Physics should not be too difficult to make interesting! The authors sometimes use concepts that are not introduced and explained until later in the book. There must be better choices for an introductory physics class. (This text is the only physics text used at San Francisco State University. I have to assume that the primary (only?) reason it was chosen is that Lea & Burke teach there.)

I've been working with this book for three semesters now, and I feel it's strong, specifically in that:

1. The authors recognize that many beginning students need problem solving strategies; they supply a good method and are consistent with its use.

2. The book makes it abundantly clear what the big ideas are going into (and coming out of) each chapter. This was a very helpful study tool.

3. Their is surprisingly little "hand-waving" in this book, which I think is special for an introductory book on physics.

4. The problems have a _wide_ range of difficulty levels, and there are a lot of them.

5. The book covers a terrific amount of material, including basic mechanics, waves, optics, thermodynamics, and E&M. There's a short section on special relativity and other modern physics too, which is a nice appetite-whetter for students who will continue on.

This book can be very useful, but the organizational structure might at first seem a little opaque. After some getting used to, I have found the book a great resource. I would definitely recommend it for an introductory sequence at almost any school. I think the book might fit in best at more rigorous institutions, because it doesn't really pull many punches in the early chapters (though it does a good job making challenging material digestible). A good instructor could effectively use it at any institution, though--it's written to be understood.

One side comment regarding other reviews: The intro physics courses at SF State (where some of the reviewers used this book, including me) are unfortunately out of sequence, with students taking intro E&M with as little as one semester of calculus under their belts. This is obviously a big problem and I think some criticism has been leveled at the book (unfairly) because of it.

With 2 very good stories (by Michael Connelly and Edward D. Hoch), three excellent ones (by John Harvey, Persia Walker and Paul Guyot) and quite a few other decent ones, this anthology is far better than average. Recommended.

Presented under the auspices of the Mystery Writers of America, this novel contains 19 intriguing short stories, with a common theme: cops. There are police procedurals and mysteries, but more important, the stories reflect on the live of cops--as persons, on their jobs, how they perform their duties, their sense of right and wrong, and, of course, as Michael Connelly says in a short introduction, "How are we to weigh the burden of the badge if we do not carry the badge?"

The stories range from T. Jefferson Parker's story about a retired cop and how he handles a juvenile delinquent, to Alafair Burke's take on a policewoman and how her husband reacts to a gruesome event while she's on the job, to Mr. Connelly's telling of how Harry Bosch conducts an investigation into the death of a baby.

Each of the stories is well-written and absorbing. Each, of course, stands on its own. And each is worth reading. All told, the volume makes for fascinating reading. Recommended.

My mistake I saw Michael Connelly and assumed he was the author. Wrong, some stories OK but not worth the money. Ingrid H.

Reviewed by: Stephanie Rollins for ReviewYourBook.com

The Blue Religion is a compilation of law enforcement stories. All are brief, so this makes for good bathroom reading.
Not all of the stories in this book were good. A few were a bit boring and poorly-written. Then again, a few were great. There are 19 stories, so there are by far more good stories than bad.
Some are written in a manner in which only someone in law enforcement can truly relate. The Blue Religion would make a great gift for a law enforcement personnel or someone just graduating from the police academy.

These entertaining nineteen tales focus on the police procedural theme. However, as Mr. Connolly explains in his introduction, for the most part the entries concentrate on the "world of the cop" as the stories "explore the burden of the badge" more so than investigative procedures. The contributions run the gamut with a strong historical by Polly Nelson to the return of Harry Bosch to a retired cop and his wife running into trouble (T. Jefferson Parker's "Skinhead Central). There are no clinkers yet the range is vast from a dark tale of a selected amnesiac ("Such a Lucky, Pretty Girl: by Persia Walker) to amusingly light (Jon Breen's "Serial Killer"). All are excellent, especially insightful is Paul Guyton's tense "What a Wonderful World" that proves a short story can contain fully developed characters; an apropos title along with Alafair Burke's "Winning" as this anthology is a wonderful look at individual members of the Blue Religion special congregation.

Harriet Klausner

A bad hoax and a book that probably shouldn't
have been written.
It does no one proud and is pretty much a waste of time to read.
No one but a famous man could get trash like this published.

As a previous reviewer mention, this book is only tangentally related to Frayn's "Copenhagen." Your enjoyment of it will have little to do with what you thought of the play. "The Copenhagen Papers" is an interchange between the author of "Copehagen" and an actor friend of his concerning some mysterious documents dated from World War II. It's a fun little book that made me wish I could goof off with my friends in some clever sort of way.

This is a marvellous entertainment - I'm not sure whether I should correctly describe it as either a memoir or novelette - which explores the nature of reality. It's not really a sequel to Michael Frayn's splendid play "Copenhagen", but does delve into some of the same terrain as the play. Instead, it is a witty exchange of thoughts and letters sent between Michael Frayn and actor David Burke (He portrayed physicist Niels Bohr during the play's original London production) about a set of manuscripts which allegedly date from the internment of German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his colleagues at Farm Hall immediately after the end of World War II. What follows is a terse, spellbinding mystery which is well told by both writers, replete with ample doses of English humor.

I thought COPENHAGEN was a great play, and I picked up this
book thinking it was background for the play (the bookjacket
gives some hints that that isn't the case, but I didn't bother
to read that. Anyway, it turns out to be less than that, and
also much more. I was sucked into the mystery along with
Michael Frayn, and read it in one sitting (it's short). I
highly recommend it for pure entertainment.

I loved the play Copenhagen - saw it four times, and it re-sparked my interest in physics, which I read about as a hobby. I know, weird, but whatever, I'm a smart chick.

Anyway, this book isn't about the play at all, really, it's about an exchange of letters between the author and one of the actors in the London production of Copenhagen. And it's well-crafted, I think anyone who enjoys a good mystery, and a bit of the backstage goings-on would enjoy the book. It certainly captivated me and both Michael Frayn and David Burke write well and with a good deal of dry British humor.

While it's true that parts of this book read like a commercial for the R4 System of recovery, there is plenty of material that will help an athlete learn how his or her body can recover more quickly between workouts. You can experiment with the recovery ideas presented by Burke and find which work for you and discard the ones that do not.

I think there's some useful information in this book if you're interested in taking performance up a notch, but you have to take it with a grain of salt. As other reviewers have stated he does go on and on about his patented R4 system, but even if you're totally sold on it by the end of the book it's not like there's an R4 exercise recovery drink sitting next to the Gatorade on the supermarket shelves.

So ignore the R4 fluff, and focus in on what he has to say about muscle recovery in a general sense. The author presents some useful information on muscle recovery, and how your body needs an appropriate mix of carbs, electrolytes, and protein to properly recover from bouts of exercise. He also discusses other forms of helping muscles recover, such as massage therapy, but not in enough detail to be worthwhile.

His main focus in on endurance exercise, so don't expect to find a ton of information if you're doing weight training.

Maybe this book is accurate. Maybe.

I cannot find any other research studies on this topic, expect thru the "Endurox".

The author seems to think the only way to deliver his claims is thru a "sport drink" ... which he repeated so many times as to put a red flag up for me.

I did some research on the web, and found that the author has licensed the "R4" formula to the makers of the powered "Endurox". Of course, if it is in print, it must be true, right? =)

In any case, I would like to see results of a study not associated with the author or the powdered drink maker.

I am just a bit skeptical, but if it works, this may be a great thing for all of us.

Have you ever finished an exercise that you didn't think was too hard and awoke the next day to find yourself sore? Have you ever had a really hard workout and planned for at least one day of being sore only to find yourself ready to go the next day? If you want probable answers to these questions, read this book. Burke offers a great explanation of what happens to your muscles during the stress and recovery phases of exercise, and offers great advice on how recover with the most efficiency. If you're interested in finding out more about the science of recovery, this is a must read.

The author goes on and on about the R4 recovery system, which is patented, of course you will find R4 attached to the name of an athletic recovery drink.

I bought this book, but wish I hadn't. It's a very long (and expensive) brochure for a product that I am certain the author has some sort of financial interest in.

Nothing too useful in here, nothing brilliant at all.

An excellent book with lots of nice color photos and diagrams. Shows and talks about examples and solutions for informing travellers, explaining how things work, controlling input, interfacing with the screen, exploring the 3-d interface, and map systems.

At first glance, this book looked exciting. However, once I started to (try to) read it, I found this book, itself, to be poorly designed. Emphasis seemed to be on slick, glossy pages rather than on content--unfortunate, because my initial appraisal had been, "Great! Full color examples". Sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations. There are better books out there. Over all, worth a glance but not a purchase unless you are just building a group library of information graphics books. I also agree with another reviewer who felt that some of the example designs were not very good.

Helpful, interesting, although not a classic in the same way that, say, Tufte's Envisioning Information is. For every piece of good design in this book, there's another piece which strikes me as quite bad (the Internet map sites in particular suffer from jumbled, cluttered, confusing interfaces). But this book is still a valuable resource for people interested in this kind of stuff.

At first glance, this book looked exciting. However, once I started to (try to) read it, I found this book, itself, to be poorly designed. Emphasis seemed to be on slick, glossy pages rather than on content--unfortunate, because my initial appraisal had been, "Great! Full color examples". Sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations. There are better books out there. Over all, worth a glance but not a purchase unless you are just building a group library of information graphics books. I also agree with another reviewer who felt that some of the example designs were not very good.

the surprise part is surprisingly not one.

This book is quite silly. The authors crack the book up enormously, and then fail to deliver. Particularly the chapter called Demystifying Math was a huge letdown. There are no general, structured ways to think presented that will enhance your problem-solving skills, just a few hardly interesting probabilities. It's kind of annoying given how the authors praise their own book all the time. For example, they talk about some brilliant people like John von Neumann, and go on to say "each of them knew how to think smart mathematically without having read this book. Just how this was possible we are not certain...". Alright, they are not dead serious, but it's annoying given how ridiculous the Math chapter in fact is. And the book is packed with "like a Mensan would", "Mensans love this", Mensans love that", "a real Mensan would" etc etc. I don't consider this book a total waste of money, because it doesn't cost much and there's the occasional interesting fact.

The Mensa Think-Smart Book does not deserve the titel "book". It has no substance,- no volume. The author provides a couple of exercises and examples but that's about it. I don't think the reader is able to think-smart after reading this "book". In other words; it's bogus.

This book is one for all you mega mind wizards. This will get you thinking and working.

I'm not big on short mystery stories, mainly because the plot seems to be either way too thin to offer much intrigue, or way too complicated to be packed into a few thousand words. I was pleasantly surprised with Murder Most Crafty. Most of the stories were meaty enough to offer some level of speculation regarding "whodunit," while not too complicated to follow. I found some old favorites, as well as some new authors to check out - and the craft projects were an added plus.

This is supposed to be a short-story murder-mystery anthology where all the stories have a "crafts" tie-in. Unfortunately, it serves as an excellent example of the things I find wrong with much of the current "hobby mysteries" craze.

There are 14 stories in the collection, all by authors with at least one professionally-published murder mystery to their name. Out of that 14, four aren't murder mysteries at all; they're descriptions of how the killer got away with it. Another is about a theft rather than a murder, but is otherwise competently written. Several of the stories veer sharply away from mystery and into horror; one of those has no sympathetic character anywhere in the story, and its ending is so ambiguous as to go well beyond "making the reader think" and over into "making the reader say, 'What the fleep is supposed to have happened here?'" And one story telegraphs its ending in the second scene, then proceeds straight to said ending without even the courtesy to the reader of a single red herring -- "mystery" on the fourth-grade reading level.

The important thing about each and every one of these stories isn't the mystery; it's the craft-project instructions at the end. And you can tell which of the authors cared enough about their readers to come up with a reasonably well-crafted mystery as well as a craft project, and which ones just dashed off the first idea with a crafts connection that came into their heads, took the check, and ran.

I might look into the series novels by a couple of the listed authors, but this book is going straight into the cull box for the secondhand store. Which is where I suggest you look for it, especially if you like to play with the project instructions in hobby-mystery books, because they're pretty clearly the part the writers and the editor spent the most effort on.

Though technological advances have made mass production not only much easier but customized so the phenomena of craft shops and shows around the country might seem like an anachronism but remain very popular. This fifteen short story collection anthology adds murders as the extra ingredient in the artistic crafts. The tales are top rate with each hooking the audience (and not just because the star is making a rug) as the reader seeks the pattern to the homicide. Fan favorites include China Bayles, Lili Marino, Betsy Devonshire, Rei Shimura, Catherine Levendeuer, etc. In other words, some of the craftier series sleuths star in these shorts. Each author provides a craft tip, but what make MURDER MOST CRAFTY worth reading are the latest appearances of some of our favorite detectives starring in fine tales.

Harriet Klausner

"Murder Most Crafty" offers the reader 15 short stories which combine murder/suspense with a "craft" theme. Each short story is followed by a simple introductory project for the craft featured in the story. Crafts run the gamut from basket-making and fly-tying, to making paper by hand. As in any collection of stories, the quality of the stories varies widely. My favorites in the collection were "How to Make a Killing Online", by Victoria Houston, "The Deepest Blue" by Sujita Massey, and "The Collage to Kill for" by Susan Wittig Albert. In "How to Make A Killing Online", we meet a crafter of dry flies, Martha Estabrook, who gets mixed up with a online stalker. Ms. Houston is a new author for me, but this great story will certainly prompt me to check out her other books. "The Deepest Blue" features information on the Japanese method of dying indigo cloth, and was a well-told mystery. Ms. Albert's story "The Collage to Kill For" features her heroine China Bayles and was thoroughly enjoyable, especailly for fans of the China Bayles series. Other authors whose stories are in the collection are: Maggie Bruce, Jan Burke, Dorothy Cannell, Susan Dunlap, Monica Ferris and Denise Williams, Parnell Hall, Judith Kelman, Margaret Maron, Tim Myers, Sharan Newman, Gillian Roberts, and Paula Woods.

Many of the stories feature characters in existing series, which readers unfamiliar with the series might have trouble following. That is my main criticism of the book, that many of the tales were hard to appreciate if you aren't familiar with the author's stories. Still, if you are a fan of "hobby mysteries" you might enjoy discovering new authors featured in this book.

This is another great James Lee Burke novel. There is alot of Texas history in the story. And as always James Lee Burkes writing style makes the story very realistic. In this book a story is told of two guys who are running from the law in Louisiana and head for Texas. They are looking for and find Sam Houston just before the battle for Texas independence. The story is told as only James Lee Burke can tell it. Fast reading and holds your interest. If you like James Lee Burke, you like Two for Texas.

More of a long short story than a novel, this 1982 Burke effort does not have the depth of plot and characters that the latest Burke novels offer. Basically two escaped convicts, one old one young, exit a Louisiana hell hole of a prison and move south into Texas ending up with Sam Houston's near the Alamo. The young convict is a Holland, the great-grandfather of Billy Bob from Heartwood.

Hard not to like and enjoy a James Lee Burke book. This is really more of a short story full of action in the period of the Alamo. One can see the genesis of the future Burke works. Wonderfully descriptive phrases, fully drawn characters and the ever present feeling of danger. As a James Lee Burke fan I am glad it has been reissued...it's well worth taking the time to explore his origins...and it's got lots of action and thrills.

If you think (like me) that JL Burke is America's finest writer, then buy "In the Electric Mist" or "Laying down my Sword", both of which were superbly crafted (or any of the Robicheaux novels, for that matter). "Texas", though, is brief, thin, and unBurkean. I'd give his other books 5 stars, but this one doesn't even deserve a 1.