Carrier Books

Although I found the ingenuity of a flying nocturnal mail carrier intriguing I was disturbed and disappointed when I reached the chapter about the character's alter ego, the mail carrier of nightmares. The illustrator chose to paint him black whereas the mail carrier of dreams is white. How pathetic that in this 21st century we see this blatant racism in children's literature. I would have hoped that Gallego Garcia, who penned Leyenda del rey errante would have chosen an illustrator who could not perpetuate negative stereotypes.

If you are interested in a general survey of European history during this period, which is ironically what this book purports to be, I'd suggest starting somewhere else. This book is complementary to an already working knowledge of these years in Europe but as the initial exposure to it will frustrate anyone. Roberts describes some events in insightful detail but then makes passing reference to others I consider major ones without explanation, as if assuming the reader already knows about them. He does this with annoying regularity. If you are looking to fill in the cracks of your knowledge on this subject, this may be the book for you. Otherwise find a genuine survey on the subject and build some depth first.

I do not think it is a good test book, because the editors are very careless. I find several wrong answers in it and I think for a test book, the accuracy is very important. if you want to buy this book, do not always trust the answers the book give you.

What a silly book. What a silly concept. Now most of the time these two qualities would make a book a hit in our home, but "T. Rex at Swan Lake" just sat there without the usual `again' requests.

The principle problem, I think, is that T. Rex is relegated to being a skeleton since this is modern times. And at least for my two (girl and boy-5 and 3 respectively) they had a hard time being drawn into a story about a stack of bones. (No dinosaur fanatics here, so do keep that in mind.)

Two Stars. It didn't knock our socks off, but if your children are dinosaur fanatics, they may like it better. (The editorial reviewers did an excellent job of summarizing the plot.)

I thought the chapter on Niosomes was a little thick. A lot of padding meant to cover up a barely existent theme, perhaps? I don't think an entire section needed to be devoted to applied targeted drug delivery to tumour, brain and bone marrow. Some of the most boring and obvious choices for drug deliveries to be applied. And honestly? I think the literature could've been a bit more tabulated.

Although I do appreciate the trash-talk found in his introductions, I think Terence is really a poor substitute for Plautus. While they're both very similar in many ways, a major difference between the two that will continue to be the main distinction is that, while Plautus is hysterically funny, Terence fails to elicit more than a chuckle.

This is a good translation and I have no problems with this edition- I just don't much care for Terence.

The Images of America series features a wide range of topics by numerous authors. Some are quite good, others more mediocre, and a few are downright bad. This book falls at the lower end of the mediocre category.

The book covers only the area from Capitol Hill to Foggy Bottom, stopping short even of Georgetown. Generally, those are the areas out-of-towners stick to on their vacations, so this book will be relevant to them. Thomas Carrier, the author, virtually ignores the rest of the city and metropolitan area.

Dates are provided only for some of the photographs and illustrations, lessening their value. Quixotically, many of the captions go on at length about some building, then say that the illustration depicts the site before all that happened - leaving out anything about what you're actually looking at. The illustrations are keyed to maps at the beginning of each chapter - that's fine, but no street address is provided in most of the captions, which would have been useful. There also are a great many statues illustrated - again, fine for tourists, but not having much to do with the life of the city.

One example of the book's lack of focus: On page 105 is a fine photograph of the Watergate band barge, a fixture of Washington life for several decades until the advent of loud jet planes forced its removal in the early 1960s; the nearby Watergate complex of the 1960s got its name from this location. The foreground of the picture shows dozens of canoes filled with people crowding close to the barge early on a summer evening. Steps for people to listen to the free concerts are still by the river today - for no apparent reason until one understands the original purpose. Yet Carrier's caption is concerned completely with Memorial Bridge, seen only dimly in the background. His only comment on the barge is it's a "floating band stand."

The absence of Carrier's understanding of social events and context and his focus on simplistic touristy features underscore the tone of the entire book.

This unpretentious book, just 110 pages, is at its best when sticking close to its source material; the thirteen-page chapter on shipboard procedures stands out as most valuable. The moment it moves into analysis or background, things become shaky. Perhaps the best example is the discussion of ship displacement in inter-war naval treaties, which the author gets exactly wrong and which has no direct relationship to the subject anyway.
Chronological disorder afflicts the first chapters - flashbacks, fast-forwards, digressions, and wholesale shifts in time. The first sentence on page 12 says Graf Zeppelin's keel-laying followed the launch of the battleship Gneisenau by twenty days; the very next sentence separates the events by two years. Apparently Burke has time-traveled to the carrier's launch without telling us. He eventually manages to confuse even himself. On page 27, the Germans "visited Britain's HMS Furious being displayed during Navy Week for some inspiration, but would gain little from this early carrier. They would be more successful in their visit to Japan and the carrier Akagi, returning with plans for elevators and aircraft arrestors essential for flight-deck operations" - hardly revelatory for a reader who encountered the exact same information on page 15.
Another round of proof-reading and fact-checking would have helped. In mentioning American officer McDonnell and the attack on Pearl Harbor, Burke manages to misspell both McDonnell and Pearl Harbor. He correctly identifies Slavnyi as the vessel ultimately responsible for sinking Graf Zeppelin but cannot say whether Slavnyi was a submarine or a destroyer. (She was a destroyer, as can be readily found in numerous sources.) He cites a well known excellence of German warships as seaboats when in fact German warships of this period had famously poor sea-keeping.
The book includes a couple dozen photographs of indifferent quality. There is no index, but the bibliography lists some worthy titles. Much to my delight, Burke uses footnotes rather than endnotes. I would like to have seen more sourcing; the most substantive sections have few footnotes. One irritating feature was the presentation of extended quotations, several paragraphs long, without distinctive formating or punctuation other than the opening and closing quotation marks, which might be a page or more apart.
The back cover comment - "Read now, for the first time..." - clearly targets readers unfamiliar with a subject covered by four books already sitting on my shelf. Siegfried Breyer's book Graf Zeppelin (AJ Press, 2006) gives perhaps the best English-language account (not to be confused with another Breyer book from Schiffer, 1989, much shorter but more easily acquired). M.J. Whitley's German Capital Ships of World War Two is also an excellent source. Most comprehensive is Ulrich Israel's German-language Einziger deutscher Flugzeugträger Graf Zeppelin.
Now, I've gone on a bit in trying to give examples for all my criticisms, but Without Wings does contain a good amount of information. I think Burke hurt himself with his reliance on document ADMT 19137 from the National Archives which he cites throughout the book. Why is this bad? Because there is no such document. Presumably Burke means ADM 1/19137 ("Report on German aircraft carrier GRAF ZEPPLIN [sic]"), but fumbling his own primary source a dozen times tends to erode his authority. Misnaming the torpedo boats in Graf Zeppelin's final weapons trial, misunderstanding the requirements of Atlantic operations - with too many errors, Without Wings must content itself as an interest-sparker rather than a reliable reference.

The reviever below laments "European colonialism" , and gushes about the "vibrant continent" of Africa. If this is how she feels, then why doesn't she move from the United Kingdom to Africa??!!??

Because she knows that the standard of living in the UK is so much better! And those countries in Africa ( or anywhere else) that have benefited from Western (Christian ) missionaries and influence owe us much but will not acknowledge it.

Sad.

Mazrui has been blinded and brainwashed by his religion. Arabs invaded Africa as Europeans did. Islam is a foreign religion to Africa like christianity. He probably doesn't knows their prophet or where the religion developed. For him slave masters can be Europeans only they can not be Arabs or other people. It is surprising that he doesn't know that people from East Africa where he is from have been enslaved by Arabs and deported in the Middle East.
Our continent needs scholars whose work are not based on emotions or fanatism.

Ali A Mazrui's book is a good start at redressing the balance - for too long, we have had to make do with European analyses of the African heritage, its place in the world today and the prospects for the future.

Whilst Mazrui has done Africa some service with this book and the accompanying TV series, the book is tainted by a bias. The author uses the geographical link at Suez to suggest that Islam is more a "home" grown phenomenon than say, the Greek or Roman influence. In doing this, the opperesive colonial and cultural homogenisation principles which Islam has imposed on parts of Africa are downplayed. Equally, the indigenous nature of Ethiopian Christianity are somewhat sidelined. Nevertheless, Mazrui's analysis of "state" and "stateless" societies is the most profound I have come across. Excellent!

The author is clearly passionate about the roots of some of Africa's present ills within European colonialism and in this, he is consistent with all of his fellows from Africa, myself included. He blames "Western culture" of destroying the native African culture and traditions whilst ignoring the fact that Islam has done as much if not more to create some of the tensions in modern Africa.

Nevertheless, this is a good introduction to a vibrant continent.

Hopefully the author can write a revised version in the light of events in South Africa (majority rule), Nigeria (squandered resources amid poor governance), Sudan (religiously motivated genocide), Uganda (a resurrection after the bloodletting of the Amin era), Tanzania (political stability within a single party state).

This book is a total rip-off. I thought Artech published advanced technical books. This book is a joke when it comes to relating the title to the content. It is is devote of anything related to carrier Ethernet. It is like a primer for Ethernet. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS TERRIBLE BOOK!!
As someone who has worked designing Ethernet equipment I found the information in this book very weak. Chapters about the history of Ethernet and Ethernet frame formats aren't worth spending $80 on. This author should be ashamed to have book his name on this lousy book.

I pre-ordered this book with excitement. That excitement faded fairly quickly once the I realized just how much "refresher" there was on things as simple as NICs, Ethernet HUBS (yes I said hubs).. My opinion is that if a reader is looking for knowledge as complex and deep as carrier grade Ethernet services, they should already have the basics of Ethernet. It might have made sense to dedicate a page or two to refer the reader to other Ethernet basic training materials before continuing to read this book.

It is not until Chapter 6 (pg 157 of 195 content pages) that we get to "Carrier Ethernet Services", leaving a scant 38 pages (at best) to get into the meat and potatoes of the entire purpose of the book.

The reader will certainly get a good dose of the acronyms that make up the topic, but will lack the understanding needed to develop a solution which scales and makes a profit.

If this book was paperback and priced around $35, I would consider it a good primer on the topic. A hardback at $80 is in the realm of "textbooks", and I do not feel this book is of that depth.

I work for a vendor in this industry and am onsite every day with a large MSO. I made this purchase hoping to have something to share with my clients, but so far my clients have found it equally thin on useful information.