Clayton Books

This book is a very good study on the reasons why belief in intelligent design is the most logical explanation for life and the universe. John Clayton is a former atheistic evolutionist who looked at the facts, knowledge and research of science and, like Albert Einstein, concluded that the Universe indeed had a creator.

It's easy to read and hard to put down simply because it's very interesting.

The chief aim of this book is contrary to the Bible's teachings.

I'm reminded of Thomas the Apostle. In John 20, Jesus castigates Thomas for wanting proof to believe in Him. Stop doubting and believe, Jesus says. "There were indeed many other signs that Jesus performed in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. Those here are recorded so that you may hold the faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this faith you may possess life by his name" (John 20:30-31).

For a good read about science and religion, read Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages. Unlike The Source, Rocks of Ages is intelligently written and accurately conveys the true nature of faith. Don't forget your thinking cap at home, though, as Gould's book is thought provoking.

This book is an excellent compilation of the evidence for a divine creator in the scientific record. My husband and I read it together and found it to be easy to understand. We also found it read quickly despite the complicated material. I highly recommend this if you are interested in the subject of our earth's origins and the basis for God.

I am sorry to see a few reviews where I think the readers missed the point of John Claytons Book. I would highly recommend attending one of his Seminars on the subject which are given throughout the U.S. This book is not trying to solve all the mysteries of God. What it is doing is showing that it takes tremendous faith to belief in science without God and that our faith in God can be supported by what we know and see in creation. Romans 1:20 "For since the creation of the world God's invisible quailites-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made." Yes, faith is the most important part of the equation in our belief of God but we do not have to be afraid to look at ways science can support that faith. This book is very helpful for the Christian and Non-Christian in understanding that faith in God is not just blind but includes logical, scientic thinking. Great gift for a college student.

The description of the author and book say it all. A second generation atheist and scientist who approached the topic from "the opposite direction". Some have criticized this book with the admonition that potential readers should simply "stop doubting and believe"--an absurd proposition when reaching out to atheists. The OT and NT spend little time on the creation of the universe, and rightfully so. The message is the word of God, not an complete explanation of what we know of his entire creation. This book starts from the mindset of a curious nonbeliever and provides compelling evidence of God's eternal design and forces the reader to re-examine their nonbelief. He also details his own study into the religions of the world and how his study led him to become a Christian.

This comic introduces Toxin into the comic world as how he came around and who the father is of the symbiote. Very good reading! If you are a fan of the villans in Spider-Man you will love this book.

This book is all right, but not spectacular. There were just too many goofy continuity errors for me to really be able to enjoy it. The biggest error would be Black Cat not knowing who Carnage was; she was one of the major players in the maximum carnage saga. I don't know how an author could reasonably write a carnage/venom story and not have at least looked at Carnage's biggest story arc.

Also, the whole Carnage having a spawn, and Venom's reaction to it seem kind of off. I mean, Kassady's Carnage manifestation isn't really a symbiote; it's just a part of him, so there's no "we" when he talks. His actual symboiote was destroyed in the first carnage storyline, so I am surprised he would be even be able to spawn, let alone against his wishes.

Overall, bad-story, but nice art.

I have read this Graphic Novel and it was the most amazing graphic novel i have ever read. The story was amazing, the artwork was amazing the whole thing is amazing. so if you are even considering to get this book GET it now. Also if you want to know more about the relationship of carnage and venom buy it. if you know nothing at all about the symbiotes you may get confused but even if that is the case it is still amazing.

Spider-Man: Venom vs Carnage looks fantastic. Venom and Carnage must be a thrill (and a pain) to draw, and they've never looked scarier than they do in this paperback. When I first opened the book, I wasn't sure if I was going to like the style, but it grows on you pretty immediately, and these are the perfect characters for the style. Spider-Man himself looked, well, ok, but the symbiotes looked amazingly cool, just monstrously terrifying, and that in itself is worth a browse.

However, the writing does not live up to this review at all. Pat Mulligan, AKA Toxin, the new host, is written reacting the way I think most normal people would react in such a horrifying position, and I give Milligan kudos for that. Unfortunately, it seems that Milligan wrote this without first checking older issues of Spider-Man, because there's all sorts of things that are out-of-continuity. First of all, the Black Cat doesn't recognize Venom or Carnage, despite the fact that they've met numerous times, most famously during Maxmimum Carnage. Second, Spider-Man's spider-sense, which is supposed to warn him of immediate personal danger, and cannot sense the symbiotes, somehow detects the symbiotes fighting each other from across town. While Venom warns Carnage that giving "birth" will be an exhausting and painful process, you have to wonder why Venom didn't seem to be aware that he had birthed the "seed" that eventually became Carnage.

At any rate, it's a fun little read, but if you're really familiar with the history of the various characters, you may get hung up on the various inconsistencies throughout.

It was definately an interesting book but it had some major flaws. As a stand alone book it is worth reading but the art varies from good to unbearable pretty quick.

This is seen with how huge venom appears which just becomes rediculous. Another problem concerns continuity. What I refer to is The Black Cat not recognizing either venom or Carnage. Anyone who has followed spiderman comics knows that the black cat helped spiderman in the crossover series Maximum Carnage which dealt with both carnage and venom. For her not to know these two is very unlikely.

That is the one thing that really bothered me because it made me feel that the author didn't do research on the characters at all but instead decided to ignore previous histories that these characters had. The whole deal with the birth seemed a bit far-fethced as well. When venom created carnage it was a spur of the moment event that didn't show him to bin in any pain. But carnage acts as if it is a painful experience. That might be nit picking but it seems like it is a bit misjointed when looked at if you remember carnage's origin.

other than these major flaws the story was entertaining and one does want to continue to read the book to find out what happens.

Not what I had first expected, really good book to be used as a reference guide, rather than a book on showing you more features of vb.

This book has everything I need. I found browsing(?) the book helpful as I encountered methods and code used in other books. It provides a good description of properties and what objects use them. The gigantic number of properties in VB at first intimidated me when VB1 came out in 1991, but this book helps greatly to overcome fears. The example code is good, but I would like to see much more sample code ( as we ALL would ). Buy this as a Reference tome to backup the other books you buy about VB.

I bought this book from the bookstore few weeks ago and i can say that it is one of the best buys i have made.I mean it is with hard covers, it has most of the control references in it and the examples are really helpful. And this is like the best laid out book i have seen in a long time. For the work place you can hardly find a better reference (at least on the controls).

This book is exactly what I was looking for. I consider myself to be an intermediate user (working hard to become an advanced user), and what I was looking for was a easy to use, fairly complete, concise reference book to supplement my library of "How to program in VB" books.

Topics are broken down alphabetically, and like a dictionary, the Visual Basic 6 Master Reference has little three letter "tabs" on the edge of each page (i.e. "efg") help you locate your information quickly. The information on each topic is well presented, and includes little snippets of code that help to clarify and illustrate correct usage.

Although this book is very good, it is not perfect. I have searched for some bits of information only to find that the book doesn't include them. But I can't imagine any single volume paperback or hardcover book that could provide information on all that VB has to offer.

To summarize: this is a great reference book (not a how-to book) that covers a great deal of information about the Visual Basic 6 programming language.

The other reviews sum up the book nicely. It is much easier to use then the MSDN CDs. Here is some of what it does not include taken from the preface to the book: "This book does not cover the many additional controls (such as DataGrid,MonthView,MSChart, and Winsock) supplied with some editions of Visual Basic, as well as all events, methods, properties, and objects associated with these additional controls. Moreover, this book does not cover any controls, objects, properties, events, or methods used in Visual Basic database programming." They estimated a book covering all of VB would be twice this book's size. So if you are looking specifically for database help, you'll have to look elsewhere.

I bought this for my Dad when he was building a new lean-to to store his new tractor. He read the thing cover to cover and used it as a guide not only for the lean-to but also for the addition to the garage for his woodworking area.

Nicley done, introductory how-to book for those wanting to undertake a barn project themselves. It does not give adequate guidance for sizing your project to meet varying needs. Therefore, you really have to have done your own field investigations to understand what size(s) different functions require, what heights and depths make sense for different equipment, animals, sports uses, etc. Useful, but not as comprehensive in the planning process as it could have been.

A good book on basic info plumbing and electrical and structure but very little on plans

This book provides a thorough review of the building techniques that go into constructing a variety of outbuildings, with clear illustrations and very good detail. Following presentation of the techniques, it provides plans for a number of buildings. As a homeowner with intermediate skills, I found this book extremely useful, and I'm looking forward to putting my new skills to work on my new shed.

this is a good book for learning how to build from a small shed on your property to a barn. gives you all the information and materials.

In a review for another book (1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die) I wrote "I will not waste your time by expressing outrage over titles that should or should not have been included. Everyone has their own opinion and finding out what is and isn't written about is part of the fun." While I still feel that this sentiment is a wise one, I have to break it for this book because some of their choices are objectively ridiculous. Now, as the title of this review implies, by and large the book is pretty good. The factoids are interesting, as are the tidbits about films that never ended up being made. The reviews leave something to be desired, as the majority of them have little room for anything beyond plot summary, but they write one large review per year and the selections are largely good ones. But then the 90s happen and everything begins to tumble. Home Alone is apparently worthy of movie of year for 1990, Hook and Judge Dredd actually get articles written about them, as do The Cable Guy and the live action 101 Dalmations. Alien Resurrection gets an article, the Spice Girls are described as "naturals under the camera" in SpiceWorld, "one of the best pop films since A Hard Day's Night." As if that weren't bad enough, Godzilla is chosen as the *movie of the year* for 1998. Other dubious inclusions from the year include Armageddon, Scream 2, The Avengers, and Lost in Space. Obviously other people presumably have different opinions than I do, but do we really wish to extoll the virtues of The Avengers (currently sporting a 3.3 rating on IMDB) while omitting American History X, Shakespeare in Love, and other worthy picks? In what universe does Godzilla deserve twice as many words as Saving Private Ryan? Maybe the fact that the book was penned in 1999 left the writers with no perspective for the 90s, because something weird happened and it marrs the conclusion of the book.

If so, this book will solve your problem pronto. It just might be the best general guide to movies I have ever seen. I doesn't cover EVERY movie ever made like some review books do, but it covers the cream of the crop for every year from 1927 to 1998. Granted, some of the more recent reviews are a little questionable, and some gems might have been missed (they can't please everyone). But overall this movie is a great way to find a movie that you might like to rent or buy that you have overlooked.

The descriptions are short, but give a good general idea what to expect. As another reviewer mentioned, movie MPAA ratings are missing, which is a minor inconvenience to the family oriented or morally selective. Finally, this movie book contains some REALLY cool pictures from classic movies, some of which you won't find in the actual movie because of the aspect ratio. So there you have it, my favorite movie book, and a bargain at any price.

This books reviews some of the best and/or most memorable films from the early 30's to the late 90's. As a general film guide it is very useful, giving basical info (like plot, credits, genre, etc.) on every movie featured. My only complaint is that this book is a little too judgemental in its choice of films. For example, they ignore great classics like "Candyman", "Hellraiser", "The Fox & the Hound", "Chasing Amy", etc. while including some movies that shouldn't even be considered (I still can't believe they included "Starship Troopers" or "Godzilla"!). In resume, I recommend buying it so as to have a general idea of which movies would make a great film library, but keep in mind it's not a precise guide.

I think this book is very good but i also have a reason for not giving it the full five stars and that is that the book did not have the ratings for each movie and i think they should well,because i'm 11 and a lot of the movies sound good but they could be R or NC-17.

I think this book is very good but i also have a reason for not giving it the full five stars and that is that the book did not have the ratings for each movie and i think they should well,because i'm 11 and a lot of the movies sound good but they could be R or NC-17.

I'm waiting for a book on LDAP and directory services that believes the importance of these tools is not self-evident. When a book on this subject that persuades the reader to learn about it comes around, I'll buy two copies.

Clayton Donley, who details his involvement and contributions to the field in the introduction, is an expert; he might even be *the* expert. Certainly he's been called upon over time to promote these technologies and so has refined his understanding on many subtle issues. Thus the book has a comfortable way of introducing new terms and explains individual points well. The code examples are concise and clean. There are several instances, however, where the author assumes a point is self-explanatory when it isn't. Often the material doesn't seem to hold together for want of a short sidebar.

Some chapters seem stitched together from a collection of such notes and lack flow as well. The outline form of the chapters seems contrived, sometimes overwhelming the content. There are a fair number of forward references too, which I found very distracting. I had to use the index or google often enough that I got annoyed. A comprehensive glossary would have been really helpful.

With so many short, excerpt-like elements making up a chapter, I found it hard to focus. I wouldn't call it a promising reference either. While it is still one of the better books on LDAP I've come across, the weaknesses of make me think I won't consult it very often.

This has the best explanation on searching I've seen so far; with the Java examples I have already written some sophisticated code to access our LDAP servers. It's thin and to-the-point. I picked this up after reading a glowing recommendation in Dr. Dobb's.

If you are a programmer (Perl and Java) and you need to develop an application that needs to talk to LDAP is the right book for you. It's well structured more for a developer's perspective.

It has some concepts and advises on design, implementation and replication, but does not cover the hands-on tips on installing and integrating LDAP servers with various services, such as DNS, NIS, RADIUS, Web server, and etc.

I was looking for a book that covered the basics of LDAP, went through server configuration, schema basics and best practices, and access for a scripting language (e.g. Perl.) I got what I wanted with this book, save the server configuration portion. There was some information on servers, but nothing on how to set one up or get it going. Which makes sense because each server is different, but it would have been nice to see at least one, perhaps OpenLDAP.

Chapters one and two stand out as an ideal introduction to the history of LDAP, it's current structure, and the basics of LDAP schema. Chapter nine, on accessing LDAP operational data, is excellent. The explanations are great, graphics are used effectively, and the code samples are concise.

The only two drawbacks that I can think of are the lack of a server setup and configuration chapter, and the books slight emphasis on Perl as opposed to Java. I personally like the Perl side, but I can see how some folks might prefer Java. There are a lot of Java examples, but there are more examples in Perl.

Just picked this book up and was very pleasantly surprised at the richness of the code examples (lots of good java) as well as the crisp explanations of directory integration concepts and terminology.

I have used some of Clayton Donley's popular LDAP APIs such as PerLDAP on some of my projects and I thought I'd take a chance on a book written by him.

This is the 5th book in my library on LDAP / Directories and I find his book to be the most current and useful. Mr. Donley devotes quite a few pages to the whole issue of LDAP - XML integration and I was able to apply several of his DSML examples to my current work.

Anthony Clayton has written many good works on the French and British Army, with a great attention to detail regarding colonial troops. One of the very good aspects of this book, is that he examines the role in detail of colonial troops and commanders and what they brought to the WWI battlefield, something missing from most other works on the war. Read Clayton's "France, Soldiers, and Africa," as well as Douglas Porch's "The March to the Marne" for good backgrounds to this discussion.
Another interesting aspect of this book is Clayton's attention to morale in the French Army, and how he traces it over the course of the conflict.
I was disappointed, however, by three things in particular:
1. Clayton's writing style was much harder to read in this book than in his other works. It is choppy, there is too much information crammed into single paragraphs, and there are not enough section breaks, as the book jumps from topic to topic very quickly.
2. Much of the previous problem likely comes from the fact that the book is way too short. I get the impression that the editor forced Clayton to cram a great deal of information into less than 300 pages, and it shows. It should be twice as long.
3. No footnotes. A good bibliographical essay, but the lack of footnotes is a serious failing, especially for those like myself who would like to follow up on certain specific claims of this book.
Overall, a good read, on an under researched subject, but it could have been much better.

The book summarizes all the famous major operations of the French Army during WWI, along with numerous thoughtfully-included maps and photos. It goes into much greater detail about the formation of French strategy, tactical doctrine, leading personalities, organization, equipment, logistics, and, significantly, unit morale (including the 1917 mutinies). In addition, the book also has a nice set of appendices with the August 1914 order-of-battle as well as summary bios of leading French generals. The author, Anthony Clayton, also covers the power struggles at the top of the military hierarchy between major military figures along with increasing interference from French gov't officials. Clayton did an excellent job describing Petain, Joffre, Mangin, Castelnau, and Foch.

This book is an ideal introduction to the major challenges facing the French army during WWI and its response to them. An English-language book covering the French army during WWI is somewhat difficult to find compared to the numerous works on the British army, and I was highly pleased with the quality of this one. Excellent, well-researched work! I hope the author makes an in-depth follow up sequel to this one.

In Paths of Glory, former Sandhurst professor Anthony Clayton provides the first complete history of the French Army in the First World War. While the narrative is a bit short (200 pages) and does not offer the depth necessary to analyze operations in detail, Clayton's work represents an excellent overview of the army that bore the brunt of the fighting for the Allies on the Western Front in 1914-1918. Clayton also makes the point that this army, much maligned because of its poor preparation for combat in 1914 and pitiful performance in 1940, still was capable of four years of sustained combat against the best army in the world. For readers accustomed to viewing the Western Front through German or British eyes, this volume offers a wonderful alternative.

Clayton begins Paths of Glory with a chapter on the French frontier offensive in 1914 and then backtracks in the second chapter to discuss pre-war strategy and doctrine. After this, Clayton then devotes one chapter to operations in each year of the war, plus a separate chapter on developments within the French army. There is also a separate chapter on peripheral operations involving the French (Gallipoli, Salonika, Italy, Africa and the Mideast). Appendices include order of battle in 1914, tactical organization, conscription and reserves, equipment, capsule biographies of the main French generals, and the career of a single French infantry regiment in 1914-1920. Clayton includes 14 simple sketch maps, which unfortunately only a few depicting operational movements or dispositions. The author also includes 43 photographs, ranging from leaders, to equipment to tactical scenes.

Clayton assesses the main French problem in 1914 as a failure of "strategic intelligence" in not anticipating that the main German army would fall in Belgium or that reserve formations would be used in the enemy's first echelon. This faulty intelligence assessment led to a rash offensive plan known as "Plan XVII", which was handicapped by rigid adherence to a faulty tactical doctrine, over-age commanders and inadequate heavy artillery. Despite all the French military flaws, the French army somehow survived the heavy losses in the frontier battles and managed to thwart the German drive on Paris by quick repositioning of forces. Clayton does not do a particularly good job of assessing how the French were able to avoid defeat in 1914, but tends to favor the "tough" no-nonsense leadership of Joffre, Foch and a handful of other French operational-level commanders. However, Clayton's defense of Joffre's command style rings hollow; certainly Napoleon would not have thought much of a commander who emphasized regular meals and uninterrupted sleep over visiting his troops.

Clayton focuses heavily on morale issues - always critical for French armies - in the chapters on Verdun and the 1917 mutinies. The mutiny is assessed as relatively limited in scope, but extensive in long-term effects. Perhaps the best chapters in Paths of Glory cover the post-mutiny period where Petain was able to lead the battered French army through a period of recovery. While Petain's later career as leader of Vichy France has darkened his name, his leadership abilities with a deeply-shocked army were astoundingly effective. Indeed, Petain was not only able to rebuild the French army's morale, but to re-equip and re-train the forces to fight a modern war; the result was a much more powerful French army in 1918 (although a brittle one).

Although Clayton offers some useful nuggets of information in places - such as information on French tank developments or the greater reliance on African troops - the volume is a bit too much of an overview, albeit with a Gallic perspective. Indeed, Clayton writes well and offers excellent insight about the fighting capabilities of the much-maligned French army, but the reader will come away from this book wishing that it had been 200 pages longer.

I enjoyed this book very much. Almost everything I've read on the Great War has been from either the British or American point of view. The author states in the preface that little of the French experience from WWI has been translated into English. I was very pleased that a book about the war from the French point of view was written in English. France after all had the majority of the troops and suffered the most looses on the Allied side. I had hoped the author whould have gone into more detail on French equipment and weapons than he did, but that in no way detracts from this fine book. I highly recommad this work for anyone interested in WWI.

David Murphy

As other reviewers have said, getting anything in English about the French army in WWI is difficult, especially compared to the numerous English and American accounts. I therefore snapped this book up immediately looking for an account of those little known engagements. It's a fine book, well researched and informative, well written for the most part. But it left me wanting more detail. It primarily looks at strategic and operational level action rather than the tactical. Excellent for understanding the French command. I was hoping for more of a Lyn MacDonald approach. Perhaps this author will see these reviews calling for a more detailed view and write another in that vein. I would certainly purchase it.

"The Rose Bible" is the best and most helpful book on roses I've ever browsed or read. The pictures are magnificient, the language is informative, honest, and humorous, and the history of roses is explained very well. There is a slight bias towards cutting as opposed to garden roses in the top fifty list, but the contents and organization are nearly flawless. No potpourri tips here! If you want to know where roses came from, what is available now (with strong and weak points for each), how to buy, feed, prune, protect roses, and if you don't mind drooling over hundreds of rose pictures in the most undignified fashion, this is the book you want.

Even if you aren't into roses this is a good book to brouse through. He does concentrate on his favorites making them sound like they are the best. The thing to keep in mind with this book is that most of the modern roses will do well in his area as he says they do. However the best chapter in the book is the part on how to grow. He does give detailed type of information generously, plus pictures to show you how to do it which is a big plus. I haven't found clear photos like his in most rose books.

I am an avid gardner and appreciate a book that tantalizes me with new ideas for my garden. Although I already have some 18 roses in my garden, this book has inspired me to create even more space for more roses, and collect some amazing bourbons and antiques that are out there. I originally purchased this book to research new climbers, and found that and more! The photos are captivating, and the author provides a great history on the various species. In addition, I feel like the author does an outstanding job of explaining the positives and negatives of roses he highlights. I have reread the chapter on "Fifty Immortal Roses" numerous times, and can't seem to put this book down. I can't wait to start digging in the dirt. Very inspirational!

It would take volumes to cover the multitudes of roses that are out there, but, with a name like "The Rose Bible" I expected more than this book delivered.
It's not a bad book, it just doesn't live up to it's name. The roses listed are common, the type you can find information on anywhere. ( Try: [...])
There is nothing new in this book.

If you're new to roses The Rose Bible will open your eyes to a whole new world that exists beyond the Hybrid Tea rose and it gives very good information about selecting, growing and pruning roses.

As an experienced rosarian whose looking for more in depth or obscure rose information, The Rose Bible doesn't have it.

Make no bones about it, this book is about roses the author enjoys. This is not a bad thing. He gives you a good concise history on roses, introducing you to the various types of roses grown through time. He gives great advise on planting, pruning and maintenance over the year. Then there are the pictures- lots of them, and beautifully photographed. Yes there is a whole chapter on his favorite roses (many of them tried and true) but hundreds more are referred to with photos and text. This is an ejoyable book, fun to flip through, but still has the information a beginner needs to know when choosing roses.

A very funny inside look at a time gone by when Caddies were a big part of the Masters Tournament..........What a bunch of characters!

This is a useful book that takes us inside Augusta National's caddie shack and shows us how much things have changed since the glory days. We do learn about the men. Pappy Stokes - who was on the bag of five Master champs, including twice with Ben Hogan - and mentor to many caddies. Pappy was said to have known how to read Augusta's greens better than anyone. Arnie and Iron Man Avery, who, when seeing the King fritter away strokes in the final round in 1960, asked him "Are we chokin'?" That fired Palmer up sufficiently to come back and win the tournament. Gary Player and his caddies Ernest Nipper and Eddie McCoy, whose knowledge of the greens contributed to victories win in 1961, `74 and '78. Jack and Willie Peterson, who jumped as high as Jack when he drained the famous 45-footer on #16 in 1975. Ben Crenshaw and Carl Jackson in the Harvey Penick inspired '95 victory. We also learn other tidbits, such as the history of the famous Masters caddie jumpsuit, and the great change that took place in 1983, when the tournament allowed Tour caddies for the first time. All in all, a very good book that brings new facts to light, even to those who already know a bit about the subject. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Masters.

Interesting insight on a forgotten group of guys. Well-written book that's easy to fly through.

Good story (stories) that need to be remembered, chronicled to preserve the history of golf and golf's geatest tournament...but something seems to be lacking, missing.

The stories are well-told and interesting, even fascinating at times, but they lack character and indepth personality, a "flesh and blood-ness" that carries the reader into the heart and soul of the men being written about. The book is about characters and personalities, but we never seem to get to know them, just read about them.. We know about the caddies and we know their stories, but we never feel like we know them.

There are no bad pars, as stated in the review title. This book, while good, is a near-miss birdie. Read it anyway!!! It's about a group of men who contributed greatly to the legend, lore and tradition of The Masters. That alone makes it worth reading if you are a golf fan.

The book was interesting but I would have perferred more information on the caddies, their lives and environment, and less on the known stories of the golfers and their wins.

Although I already knew C++ when I got this book, I use it on a weekly basis solely for the last half where the book serves as the best reference I know of for the STL data types and algos. Great book, I recommend it highly

I have 3 or 4 other C / C++ books on my shelf next to this one. I might as well throw them away (except for K&R - you HAVE to own that, but alas that's the OLD days of C).

Through this book I finally understood STL - Standard Template Library (which thankfully is gone in C#). It covers all the important topics for any C++ programmer - inheritance, overloading, standard libraries (such as iostreams), etc.

You won't get a lot (any) platform dependent stuff like GUIs.

However, I wish my college prof's had used this as the intro to C++ programming text book. Granted, there are not any exercises at the ends of chapters, but any prof worth his paycheck can make those up easily enough.

Get this as your introduction to C++, or just your reference for dealing with pesky STL.

I didn't know C++ last week. I went to the local retailer and bought this book because it proclaimed itself to be the complete reference-it isn't. I see now that the books I probably want are those by Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++. Especially his Annotated Standards Document. I paid $ for the download of the standard (ISO/IEC 14882 from ansi.org); it was a good deal. I started comparing this "Bible" book with the standard and making notes of errors and ommissions, but there were just too many. Stevens didn't even get the operators right (XOR). He left out the grammer for specifying wide constants. He hardly touched on the USING statement. He left out major string functions. etc.

The only thing this book has going for it is that it was obviously a more complete reference than any other C++ book in the store. If you want the real C++ Bible, download the ANSI Standard.

I liked having the compiler and the source code together. When opening the examples from the book in the compiler, they are not listed as "exercise 6.1" and "excercise 6.2", but instead as "example 6.1: Pointers to Pointers", and so on, which makes it easier to look whatever you're looking for. "C++ the complete reference", by Schildt is presented in a similar way, and I think is a little bit more complete than "standard C++ bible", but you have to download the source code from its website, and then edit it to have it running (all the source code from each chapter is cramped into one file). If you don't mind that, then "C++ the complete reference" might be a better choice, but not by much though.

I've been searching for a good C++ book for a number of months and came across this book by chance. Al Stevens' style is clear, concise and easy to follow. Within a few days my knowledge and understanding of C++ has increased considerably due to his easy-to-understand elaboration of some not-so-easy-to-understand concepts. He deals with the latest Ansi C++ standard and also includes an easy to use compiler for hands-on manipulation of the example code. He deals with concepts like vectors and lists and dequeues that many other C++ books simply overlook. He builds on simple ideas step by step and repeats important "must-remember" ideas regularly to keep the reader in touch with what he is trying to do. I am surprised this book is not rated higher by Amazon as it certaintly is one that should be.