Chamberlain Books

I used this book on a couple of projects and was very impressed with how helpful it was. A suggest that I would like to see in this already large book is more examples of a full project. Each chapter addresses a part of the tool and the final chapter brings it all together, I would like to see another chapter for an example.

I picked up this book because I want to use a templateing system to produce web pages and I grok Perl pretty well. This book seems designed for at least two audiences, people who want to create something like a website using the TT and people who want to hack/extend the template toolkit.

The book is a very gentle and seemingly thorough introduction and explanation. The authors write with clarity and humor. I must admit that the authors write with such thoroughness and gentleness that I sometimes grew impatient. One addition I would have liked is more examples. Chapter 2 carefully explains a complete, but very simple example and Chapters 11 and 12 contain much richer examples. However, I find that I never learn unless I *do* and for such a long book, I was surprised that there wasn't more directly about the application of the TT.

You can use this book and the toolkit without knowing any Perl. The authors explain things well and clearly. However, you will get maximum value from the TT (and grok the syntax most quickly) if you know some Perl. The material on filters and plugins (there is a chapter on each, parts of another chapter about writing your own, plus entire chapters dealing with DBI and XML plugins... it's a good chunk of the book) is wonderfully detailed and probably justifies the book.

I skimmed most of the material on hacking and extending the toolkit. It seemed pretty thorough, even explaining how to alter or replace the TT syntax (right down to a quick tutorial on Yapp/yacc). I learned a lot from the little bit I read. I suspect this would be very helpful to Perl hackers and others as an example.

A note about the toolkit itself. It's very powerful. In many ways, it's like Perl itself (e.g., it has a Perl-like syntax). It has exceptions but scoping seems weak and there appears not to be anything like 'use strict'.

In summary, this is a good book for a variety of audiences. It is very well written and you should leave it's pages with enough know-how to use it for something like web page generation. I learned a lot about Perl and available CPAN modules (in addition to learning a lot about the TT). But I wish there was more direct practical application as examples, exercises, recipes, etc.

I was looking for a book which would describe the template toolkit in great detail for use in web development(CGI's).

Specifically I wanted something which would match the perl TT with Class::DBI and CGI::FormBuilder.

The Perl Template Toolkit was clearly written with good examples, but is fairly light in the CGI realm. Only chapter 12 has CGI examples, with no javascript thrown in.

A mating to CGI::FormBuilder is a natural marriage to the perl template toolkit, but CGI::FormBuilder is not even mentioned.

It's too bad the book doesn't cover in more detail some of the commonly used CGI modules in conjunction with the perl template toolkit, as the writing and examples are top notch.

It's a great look at the template toolkit, but doen't throw in enough info to hook it into the rest of the perl/web development realm to be as useful as it could have been.

With a few more chapters I think this could be a really great book.

I would not have purchased this book if I had thumbed through it at a bookstore.

The stories in this collection are hit or miss; the book's author, Carol Queen, has a tale that I found to be fascinating. I must gratefully say that the author's collection of stories won't be found in Penthouse Forum. Whew! The book does come with a DVD which may not play on all machines; don't let this stop anyone from exploring this book.

The quality of the stories is really astonishingly good - this is some of the best erotica I've read in recent years, in quality of writing and sheer hotness. This collection has a wide variety of stories, from formal encounters with professional dominatrixes to the first-time dominant, to lush fantasies and D/s relationships, and all in between; it also is thankfully inclusive of many genders. For those who have a taste for good erotica, you're in for a treat.

Far too many girl-on-girl stories, which interest me not at all. I would not have bought this book had I known.

I really wanted to love this book. Granted, Skyler Grey did a great job with her writing and storytelling, but I could not get past the fact that the male lead, a bitter knight named Rowan, backhanded the female lead, Chamberlain, TWICE in the story. The first time he backhanded her, she fell to the ground and "tasted blood in her mouth." No matter how bitter or angry any male lead is in a book, the fact that a man would physically control a woman using violence shows that he is capable of continuous violence toward women (regardless if he loves them). The saying goes, "If a man hits you once, he will hit you again." I lost complete respect for Rowan and did not find him appealing at all. Regardless if his character is portrayed as bitter and angry at life, the author could have found other ways to convey that without involving physical abuse toward the woman he supposedly has feelings for.

I am by no means a prude when reading books - as my favorites include J.R. Ward,Christine Feehan,Laurell K. Hamilton, and the list goes on - but when a man has no control over hitting a woman to dominate her he isn't really worth getting to know. In addition, during the medieval times I'm sure men often beat their women, but when reading a romance novel or historical fiction, do we really need to see our heroes beating on the female protagonist?

I can't recommend this book, as it sends the message that even if a man hits you, he still has feelings for you, and he can't be that bad of a guy. No real man should ever hit a woman, and it did not belong in this book.

I received Skyler Grey's Chamberlain's Knight this morning and could not put it down until I finished it! It is an enchanting story. I laughed, I cried, I had every emotion possible. Skyler's story line in Chamberlain's Knight is awesome. I loved everything about it! I consider it a must read, for anyone that loves paranormal romance, like me! LOL or for that matter simply romance, not to mention sensuality,galore. Skyler pulls you in right away, and keeps you there...not a boring chapter anywhere! I applaud...Skyer Grey!

Written in the 1890s, this is a classic account of a cultural/historical hypothesis which, in varying degrees, influenced Europe and America from the mid 19th century onwards and is by no means extinct today. Following Gobineau, Chamberlain postulated that the driving force of world history is the Aryan race. The purest Aryans, he believed, are the Teutons. He defined this category broadly to include not only the Germans, English, Scandinavians etc. but also the "Germanic" Celts and "Germanic" Slavs (he concedes that the latter are hard to find). The book traces the rise of Western civilization from its roots in Greece, Rome and Christianity - which, properly understood, owed nothing to Judaism - to full flower in 19th-century northern Europe. The writing style is opaque, but bear in mind that this is a translation from German and not an especially good one (Chamberlain was English but wrote in German). Nevertheless, worth reading.

This text represents the beliefs of many Europeans during the 19th and early 20th centuries. While I do not condone the worldview of H.S. Chamberlain, I do believe it is necessary to study his work to understand the way people thought before Europe self-destructed in the two world wars. This text borders on pseudo-science, but I actually find great portions of the book extremely interesting. Unfortunately, this book also became one of the books that inspired the National Socialist movement in Germany. For that reason, this book was branded heretical and unofficially banned from the shelves of the intellectual. Consequently, this book has been near-impossible to obtain or extremely expensive. Therefore this new edition is, in this humble reader's opinion, a huge benefit for a student of 19th century thought. I am glad these volumes are now sitting on my shelf without having to pay an outrageous fee for the text George Bernard Shaw declared a "historical masterpiece."

Human Remains, is an interesting book in that some hard data about bone length is included. The book is quite thin however, and reminiscent of a book found at a tourist gift shop.

The book provides a good genralised outline of the processes that human remains go through. It is a wonderful starting point for the examination of death and burial. However if a more detailed account is required it will not suffice. As such it is a stepping stone to a more in depth investigation of death and burial. It tells you where to start and what avenues to take in your knowledge quest. It is not a book clouded by other issues.

I like that is is an easy read. For readers new to the subject, it presents the story in a topical manner that flows well. I am not new to the subject- having read dozens of books on the assassination the last 30 years- but it was still enjoyable to read.

Well, this isn't quite what I expected. It's still an interesting "book", but not what I had in mind when I purchased it. This product really isn't a book by itself. It's a book and a small folder with copies of things the president had in his wallet when he was murdered. A $5 confederate bill, a playbill from the play he was watching at Ford's Theatre, and a copy of the Gettysburg Address (not in his wallet at time of death but included in the folder). Also several newspaper articles he carried. The paperback book is very small, only 130 pages in a fairly large font, so not much reading here, and not any new information. Not worth paying for brand new, but interesting to a Lincoln fan. If one is interested in reading about the conspiracies, and the political aspects of Lincoln, Blood On The Moon is more your speed. Again, not worth purchasing this new, get it used if you must have it - the book is VERY tiny, and the items in the folder only mildly interesting.

This book contains the twenty-six front page articles of Malcolm Johnson printed in 'The New York Sun' in 1947 and '48. Budd Schulberg wrote the introduction and added some articles of his own. He had previously written THE DISENCHANTED.

Mainly, though, it is almost totally Malcolm Johnson, a reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for these articles which shook the United States as he exposed organized crime on the New York waterfront. This was the basis of the movie 'On The Watrefront' starring Marlon Brando. This exposure led to the Tennessee Senator Kefauver hearings and changed labor laws which influenced America. D. A. Thomas Dewey led the charge and Budd Schulberg followed through by producing the award-winning movie directed by Elia Kazan. It won five Oscars including best picture, best director and best actor. It is one of the Top Ten films of the century.

The articles and resulting movie reveals to the world how organized crime had infiltrated the New York Harbor, the world's busiest port. The '40s photo looking down on New York City shows hundreds of piers at the height of the waterfront's extent and power. The interconnnected piers were the richest in the world.

This book shows America and New York at the pivotal time when shipping ruled the world. Back then, "money was more important than life itself." It still is sometimes and some places. Corruption and violence on the waterfront were commonplace, as they were on the street of New York ('The West Side Story'). Pictures are interspersed throughout the book; one of them is of the Hudson River, showing the West Side piers at their peak in the '30s.

Haynes Johnson also won a Pulitzer Prize for his journalism. He wrote THE BEST OF TIMES: AMERICA IN THE CLINTON YEARS, which I already reviewed.

Reading this book is like stepping into another era, and the shocks are everywhere. First of all, the material is from an olf time New York daily newspaper, the SUN, a paper long vanished into the annals of journalism. Thank goodness someone kept some old copies of this scandal-making series of articles by SUN reporter Malcolm Johnson, many of which took up the first page of the old SUN, and filled the paper with an expose on union activities along the piers and docks of old New York. Johnson's son, nonfiction specialist Haynes Johnson, contributes context for his father's Pulitzer-Prize winning scoop.

Budd Schulberg, who read these articles and worked with Elia Kazan on the screenplay of the film, pays tribute to Malcolm Johnson like one craftsman to another. But he's no dummy, Schulberg. The first thing you realize when reading these articles is what a great job Schulberg did bringing life to what is essentially a pretty dry tale of graft, without any real heroes or plot. In presenting this old journalism, Schulberg insures that we appreciate his artistry. There aren't any Terry Malloys in the pages of the SUN, and there are definitely no Eva Marie Saints looking on wistfully.

What you'll take away from what was once the expose of the decade is now merely a case of mutatis mutandis. I'm sure things along the docks have not changed an iota. Prices have, though! Johnson presented as a shocker the annual salary of the corrupt union head--$20,000! That wouldn't get you very far in today's New York. You might be able to buy a life buoy but I doubt it. And yet to his readers, that salary must have repesented the equivalent of a million bucks today, and been instantly a suspicious red flag as though to scream out in 24 pt type, RYAN'S A CROOK.

And what a prescient picture of the Mafia! It was an organization only dimly visible through the underground fog, yet one that extended its tentacles into every arena of modern urban life. Johnson must have been one of the first reporters to dig into it with any depth or understanding. It's a surprise he lived! I would have thought after three or four days of this serial, the boys would have put his shoes into concrete and sunk him under the pier. Instead he lived for another 30 years, with the Pulitzer on his mantel and a grin across his face.

Golay writes a double biography: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's and Edward Porter Alexander's. Chamberlain has long been credited with fighting the most significant action at Gettysburg; Alexander rises through the ranks to become Longstreet's Chief of Artillery. Both men are present at Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

This is an interesting approach to Civil War literature as the work simultaneously provides both the Union and Confederate participation in various major battles. Along the way, Golay, a gifted writer, is able to impart a better, more personal understanding of the engagements these two warriors participated in.

This is a very worthwhile read.

Michael Golay is a master story-teller. Thus he instantly enthralls his audience by inter-weaving the lives of one of America's greatest heroes: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, and an American traitor: Edward Porter Alexander, into one, seamless story. Golay takes dry, dead history and makes it live, so that the seemingly formidable task of reading 345 pages passes quickly and enjoyably.

This is a great book to read if you are looking for a little fun, or if you wish to share information with a friend or family member unfamiliar with the details of America's 19th century, intramural tragedy.

However, a double biography is an artificial construct, at best. Golay's choice to tie together the lives of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Edward Porter Alexander emphasizes just how artificial that structure can be.

Chamberlain was a genuine American hero: a civilian academic, past the age when he would have been expected to serve, he rushed to his country's defense at the beginning of the Civil War. Serving brilliantly, at great personal cost, Chamberlain is creditted by many with turning the Battle of Gettysburg, contributing significantly during the Battle of Five Forks, and beginning the process of national healing with his chivalrous gesture at the Surrender Triangle of Appomattox Court House.

Alexander, on the other hand, was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and a regular Army officer. Like all regular Army officers, he had sworn "to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." In order to participate in the insurrection, he violated his sacred oath: he lied. The nation expected better of the man, and should have had its expectations fulfilled.

In an age when values are, again, viewed as important, we must clearly state that, ultimately, despite the shared battles, hardships, and adventures, the lives of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Edward Porter Alexander were not parallel. Chamberlain's life is to be emulated, and Alexander's rejected.

This book works. It is simply flawed by its structure.

This is perhaps the worst book ever written on any subject. Bo may be good at some things, but writing is not one of them. If you can pick through the ridiculously poor grammar and structure, you will find that the book is a collection of uninteresting stories from Bo's career that have no value for anyone other than Bo.

This man makes Donald Trump seem outright humble. Please don't waste your money.

I purchased this book when it first came out but had not gotten around to reading it until now. I was a little suprised by some of the negative comments. I think this book delivers exactly what the title indicates. How a regular guy was able to use common sense and natural charisma to become a success. It reminded me of a lot of the conversations I had with my family growing up in NYC. In my opinion it fills a valuable niche and is worth a read.

Network, network, network... reinforcement of the old way to suceed in business. Good reinforcement of that rule.

In 16 years, Bo Dietl made 1,400 felony arrests with a 95% conviction rate - the average NYPD cop made 120 in the same time period. While working as a decoy he was mugged over 500 times, and hospitalized in over 30 instances. Dietl made little headway in the NYPD hierarchy, based on his distaste for taking written exams that focused on paperwork and were the primary province of those assigned to desk jobs so they would have time to study. Regardless, after injuring an ankle skydiving, he chose retirement rather than a desk job, and began a career as a private security expert and investigator, with his own company.

Dietl has several lists of "how to succeed," starting with being well-dressed and in excellent physical condition - both build confidence and impress people,

Other suggestions include set deadlines, don't go for perfection (eg. the last 10% takes too long), don't focus on being an innovator, and do work you enjoy. Networking is also stressed - pick up the check, start conversations, look for wallflowers rather than butt in on on-going conversations, and make notes about those you meet. Success on the job benefits from perseverance, asking for more work, taking on different work, thinking big, having an interest in people, and careful listening.

Nothing earth-shaking, but interesting nonetheless as a quick one-hour read - primarily for the mini-stories of Bo's accomplishments as a cop. However, I would not spend $15 or so on it.

The book does cover some business relationship basics. But, it has been covered in many other books and nothing new was received from reading this book.

The book came with a CD. The CD was poorly made. Too bad I listened to the CD first. It gave me a bad first impression and that may have carried over to reading the book.

The book did not keep my attention. I have three types of books. There are those that I can't put down. There are others that I throw away after the first 100 pages. And, there are those that I read a little every day when I am on the stationary bike at the gym. This was a bike read because I couldn't handle it for too long.

I thought this was an interesting book.

People who like Paris Hilton obvisouly have low self esteem and look to her to validate themselves.

this book shows how she is but a pretty face with nothing else.

I had gotten this book from my library and it was in between good and horrible. I give it five stars because I thought it depicted Paris greatly, yet pounced on her sister Nicky the same way, when to me, Nicky has proven a lot more than Paris and in more appropriate ways. Paris just doesn't understand the world we live in and I think that's the problem. She's been raised oblivious to the real world and the fact that people actually have jobs and work for a living. And that some people actually are poor and can't even afford homes. I just think she needs a wake up call. Perhaps she should go to Africa and see how people are suffering and dying. Or the tsunami zone, which I bet she and her family wasn't donating a penny of their money towards. Maybe if she does something worthwhile I'll think of her differently, but that hasn't come about yet. So, to sum of this book, that's hot. And if you want to find a place that makes fun of her, check out Heiress Paris on Msn Groups, it rocks.

This book was a sore disappointment. Not only is the text printed on cheap paperback paper (think Mills & Boon) but so are most of the pictures (in grainy black and white). I don't know why they skimped on the colours when half the fun of watching Paris and her little clique is all the candy colours. As for the writing itself, it soon becomes painfully clear that the writer never met his subject or anyone close to her. Instead he's taken a bunch of articles (mainly from ibid) and written a preachy/moralising/dull text full of quotes from unknown professors/psychiatrists. And since he doesn't know anything, a lot of chapters aren't even about Paris, but fillers. For example he devotes whole chapters describing New York schools/ japanese stars/ heirs/heiresses with tragic lives etc. But only manages to write 1 page about Nicole Richie. So if you're interested in Paris and her friends don't bother buying this book. US weekly/national enquirer makes for a better read.

Doesn't the author have better things to write than this drivel? I don't even have to read it to know what a waste of time it is. I love books, and I'll read almost anything.
But this is so not worth my brain cells.
Why can't she stick to something she knows?
Like nothing?
To quote oh so infamous Dennis Leary: "...and she can't screw to save her life!"

Please, people of the world. Brain cells are important. When they die, they can't grow back. Spare yourself, and your brain cells. They're the best frienda you have. Comic books are better than this! If you don't like to read anything else, then pick up an Archie comic! For the love of God, Archie is better than Paris Hilton!

IT WAS OK. I DID NOT LEARN ANYTHNG NEW AND I HAVE SEEN MOST OF THE PHOTOS ALREADY IN MAGAZINES.