Elliott Books

It is a good book to read,kids will love the action packed adventures of...Rakkety Tam McBurl!!!!The artwork intriged me alot. The story was fun to read and it never got boring or too repetitive. I read it in like a week it wasn't hard reading thus making it a good book for children of all ages...and adults can read them too.

A Redwall book - and that means fun dialog, great descriptions of feasts, excellent villans and heros, and a few minor variations on the common framework.

You can most likely jump in anywhere in the series, so if you haven't read any others you *could* start here. However, for most this will be a story read along the way, either in order of publication or in order of the timeline posted on the Redwall site - me, I like to go in publishing order. Enjoy!

This is one of the best Redwall books that I have read, and have reada them all

This book is from an incredibly well written series starting with the original "Redwall" book. The "formula" is good against evil, loyalty and honor with only the glory of a job well done and the genuine gratitude that goes to those who stand up for what good and right no matter what the bad guys promise. Another tale in a not to be missed series of books for all-age readers

I rated this boook a five star because of all the action and all of the adventure. It is about a young squirrel who is a huge trouble maker who knows he should do something good in his life.But there is someone who finds out about Tammo and tries to kill him.I can only say someone dies who will it be I.......cannot say.

This book is a pretty quality read. I liked it a lot better than Dashiell Hammett's stories. I think Raymond Chandler is the best writer that I've read in this genre. The book is often, funny, inventive and keeps you guessing.

The Lady in the Lake is one of Chandler's best. Philip Marlowe finds a body--but whose body is it? Laced with Chandler's wry commentary on everything from rich dames to down and out war veterans, this book is an absolute delight from the first page to the last. Classic Chandler. Sharp, funny, full of surprising twists, and always the most original prose around. Highest recommendation for an American "noir" novel.

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled private detective forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets gets a little off-track when he goes to the mountains in search of the inevitable exotic/diabolical 'missing woman' (as here, usually with a hidden past). Sure there is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly around the identity of the various `dames' of the piece that caught me off guard but the plot line lost energy as it gathered steam trying to get up those mountain passes. Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for Rusty Regan in Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in pursue of Moose's Velma in Farewell, My Lovely any day. Still, as always with Chandler you get high literature in a plebian package. Read on.

Raymond Chandler has always been known for his eloquent prose, and the masterful way he creates his settings, but many hard-core mystery fans have not loved the fact that he can sometimes sacrifice the disciplined, mathematical puzzle for creating an experience. Not so in "The Lady in the Lake", which offers a vivid portrayal of Marlowe, gritty depiction of 1940's southern California, and a riveting mystery that buttons up neatly at the climax. This book is a fabulous guide to another reality which will provide hours of entertainment.

A 2007 summer reading list mini review.

I recently read a book celebrating the 100th birthday of Raymond Chandler. In the book, many current detective writers tell Phillip Marlowe stories and then explain the effect that Marlowe and Chandler had on their careers. The praise was glowing, and I picked up Lady in the Lake, to see if it was warranted. After the first chapter, I had an inkling the praise was justified. After the second, I knew.

The story of a Marlowe trailing an executives missing wife is excellent, but it is Chandler's use of language in dialogue that is amazing. The following exchange happens late in the book when a desk clerk uses the word whom and the crusty cop with Chandler is taken aback:

Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. 'Did he say, "whom"?'
'Yeah, but don't hit him' I said. There is such a word.'
Degarmo licked his lips. ' I knew there was,' he said ' I often wondered where they kept it. ...'

The wise cracking atmosphere through the maze of dead bodies and corrupt officials is why I like Marlowe so much. And while there have been so many imitators through the years, I am amazed how fresh and innovative Chandler seems in comparison. Chandler and Marlowe are definitely worthy of all the acclaim.

Medieval romance lovers will enjoy this for the feel of it's time period. A few (could be more) interesting historical tidbits There's little drama other than a couple exciting parts. The book is mostly all the day-to-day life that readers will recognize in the running of the castle.

Refreshingly the author did NOT add to the conflict by extending it to a rivalary with the sis-in-law, bravo!
Conflict = Lady want's an annulment to prevent war & death / he distrusts her and his own lust for her.

Also, there was no mistress, with the way this story read I just expected some wench to pop up. Again, bravo! I enjoyed it more without those typical frustrations.

A good medieval romance - where I could feel the 'medieval' throughout. AND Kendric, an excellent alpha male hero. Don't hold out for more love scenes after the initial 'getting to know you' period. Though it was good. - I get irritated waiting, with plenty of book left, for the next IN DETAIL love scene; that never comes.

Kenric of Montague has held the place of my favorite romantic hero for over 10 years.I read this book as a teenager in high school and have always remembered it.Finally ordered it on Amazon so I could read it as many times as I wanted.
To me Kenric was the perfect warrior as he is described in the novel.On Crusade in the Holy Land even the Saracens had a prize on his head because of his prowess in battle.While there is "father"sends assassins to kill him to prevent him from inheriting his holdings.The assassins fail and Kenric returns to England many years later to marry Tess of Remington at the king's command.When her beauty is revealed to him he is dumbstruck and determined to have her but she wants no part of him as he has been dubbed the butcher by his enemies and she fears him.They marry however and he takes her to his castle.I liked Kenric because he had a sensitive vulnerable side where he worried that Tess would be revolted by his face and his body because he had many battle scars and that she would never love him because he was a bastard.He didn't get soft in the end and allow his enemies to live or to have easy deaths,this rang true for me as he was a fierce warlord.I hate books where the hero allows his enemy who has hurt the heroine to live or to have an easy death.They were living in a feudal society where the strong ruled by the might of their swords.I liked the heroine Tess too,but Kenric was great as a hero.The only part of the book I didn't like was when he locked her in the solar,I thought that was a bit extreme.He was arrogant without being overbearing about it.His second in command Fitzwilliam was very enganging also.Great book.The warlord indeed!

Edward, King of England, forces Kenric of Montague to marry Lady Tess of Remmington. The marriage has a dual purpose: To protect Tess from her violent stepfather and stepbrother and also to keep Remmington from falling into their hands. The stepbrother, Gordon, had planned to marry Tess and then murder her once she produced an heir until Tess ran away and married Kenric. Now Tess and Kenric must struggle to make their marriage work and also keep outside forces from tearing them apart.

I thought the plot was a bit predictable and formulaic. But what I liked about this book was the characters. Each character is rich in detail. Their backgrounds, the emotional scars from childhood, their warring passion, almost allows them to step right out of the pages of the book. Tess' and Kenric's struggle with trusting each other, for example, was heart-wrenching and real but fear kept them apart until almost the very end. They're so flawed and broken it's not funny, but both also possess the desire to love each other and be together.

I'd have to say it's not one of the best love stories I've ever read but nonetheless, it's highly entertaining.

Enticed by the many great reviews for "The Warlord" and always looking for good writers, I bought the book. What a disappointment. Although the characters had their moments, overall they were poorly written, with so many conflicting qualities it undermined their presence as full fleshed people. The story lines were interesting, but so many scenes were either underwritten or over written and you were left with little sense of cohesiveness. The book could have used a tighter edit. I've read (happliy) far better books, and can only imagine that most of the reviewers for this book have not read the emotionally satisfying
"The Princess & the Barbarian" by Betina Krahn, or " Susan Carroll's "Dark Queen Trilogy" - book 1 - "The Dark Queen" - book 2 "The Courtesan" and book 3 "The Silver Rose", or "Once a Warrior" by Karyn Monk, or "The Prize" by Julie Garwood", or "The Lily and The Sword" by Sara Bennett", or Judith Mc Naught's "A Kingdom of Dream's" (the only book by J. McNaught that I enjoyed though).

I was sold on Elizabeth Elliott after reading this book and had
to go out and find the other two that were continuations of this
one. I was fortunate to find them. I would recommend this book
to anyone as it is a book that you will find hard to put down.
I am writing this after reading all three and wish there were
more. Find it hard to believe that she has not written any more. If she did I would buy them and read them without pause.

Kenric and Tess are hero and heroine to die for. You get
truly brought into their lives and hearaches and passion. All
I can say is if you have not read them yet, please give yourself
a treat and read them.

I enjoyed this author's effort. Her style was somewhat difficult to get use to. There was a big problem with continuity and flow in the writing and FAR TOO MANY characters being introduced that didn't go anywhere. As an early effort, it is good. I expect the author will improve as her skills develop and mature. The one scene that I truly enjoyed was Trevor's pre-marriage party...Preach preacher! Too bad men don't read these books. While this is not the best inspirational romance I have read, it was interesting. I will give this author another try in the future.

I enjoyed the book it is an easy read with some great words of wisdom. It arrived in good condition.

This was a great read. I loved how the characters issues all seemed to flow together. The relationship between Cassidy and Trevor was very sweet
and realistic....I highly recommend this book.

I thought that this book was entertaining...it was a fun way to pass time during my morning bus ride. However, it felt very preachy and contrived. I thought that the characters were not really developed...Trevor seemed just as like a proto-type for a Godly man, but he didn't seem like a real person.

The author used a literary device I had never seen before. In between each chapter and sometimes even within the chapter she jumped to a completely new scene without any transition or logical continuity.

I wish Christian fiction was more a reflection of the grey areas of life instead of the black and white resoluteness of what we "should" be doing.

Forgivin' Ain't Forgettin' is excellent! It shows how a story can be sexy and juicy without the profanity, graphics, and vulgarity.

This book has romance, drama, good times and bad. It deals with realistic issues such as sex, love, death, family unity, and of course unforgiveness. Forgivin' Ain't Forgettin' shows how the lack of communication can threaten to destroy a relationship; but it also demonstrates how God can give people love, trust, and patience to endure and overcome the hardships as well.

Mrs. Elliott is an excellent writer. Her novel is an inspiration to all!

Great job!

This book is one of the best I've read, of it's type. I've enjoyed it very much. The transaction went swiftly and I received the book quicker than what was expected. I am very satisfied with the entire transaction and product.

i hope the author of this book has mature. it was recommend to me. i found it hard to read. it appears that you spend all your time doing instead of being. again i am sure she has grown beyond this kind of ideology.

I loved the story-telling aspect of the book as well as it being slightly auto-biographical but still staying relevant and an easy introduction in to Voodoo.

This is a very interesting book, the practical rituals are easy to follow, and gives a bit of insight to the reader. It's good, but left me hungry for more.

This was a very interesting book, really liked the personal insights and autobiographical details.

The Princess Test is a vary easy book to read and vary intertaning for boys and girls. Make sure you read the "epilogue!" Because the ending of the story is in those two little pages.

This great story i read was called The Princess Test written by Gail Carson Levine .It was an intresting story. I think that you should read this story if you like fairy tales. In this story , Lorelei, a daugther of a black smith , has to go throught many test to go the prince that she wants. I picked this book because it looked like a good book to read.The Black smith's daughter has to go to the prince Nicholas' castle to take many test to see if she will marry him.Many other princess came to take the test too. If you want to know how the story ends than you have to read the book.

This is a wonderful book. When a blacksmith's wife dies, he needs to go away so he hires a maid to take care of his daughter, Lorelei. The maid does not like her at all, so she finds a way to get rid of Lorelei. The maid says that they are going on a picnic and leaves her. It starts to rain, so Lorelei needs to find a place to stay. She finds a castle and discovers that there's a princess test going on. Read the book to find out what happens. This book is great! I think everyone should read it!!!

Have you ever known someone who was spoiled rotten and then one day her most precious possession is taken away? The Princess Test by Gaul Levine tells a story about a young girl name Lorelei who always had her way in everything. But then her mom died and she was very heartbroken. Lorelei is a really life like character that keeps the reader involved with very strong emotions like she have filling for people if someone is sad and she sees it she would help out just like when her mother pass away and Trudy that watches her did everything for her for example if her bed was not made right Trudy would have to fix it over and over and until it was just right for her. Lorelei is a girl who doesn't know how to do anything. Before her mother passed away, she didn't teach Lorelei how to do anything like cook or wash clothes but when the women Trudy had her wash a dish because Lorelei ask to help Lorelei had gotten a big rash. Her mother did everything she could to keep a smile on Lorelei's face which was a very nice thing to do for her daughter, but now that she is gone, Lorelei is helpless.
This book is very good. I liked it because I'm really into stories that have love in it. The way I felt about this book is that I really have feelings about what's going to happen next and I really like when that happens it kind of have something like who's going to win because it has a lot of women that the prince has to pick to marry. But I think I already know who the prince wants to marry. The role the prince is this young man that bumps into a young girl and they both start to talk to each other but the prince starts to like her. But the prince also has to consider who his parents want him to marry. Would if his parents like the girl he falls in love with? What if his parents don't like the person that he likes? It's very good and what I'm trying to say as she was younger and she was very picky about things she never grew out of it she still the same and what I'm trying to say about that do you t think the prince is going to like her steel if he sees how she really is.how do you think she will act if she gets picked as a princess, do you think everything will have to go perfect for her? Does everything have to go just the way she wants it? I really have a lot of feelings about this book so this is a really good book it's and I think and I think who ever read it is going to enjoy it.

Ii the book,the author of this book is Gail Carson Levine.It is a fiction book,but it is really a great book.Lorelei is the name of the girl who is going to become a princess in the story. The Chief Royal Chambermaid had fallen in love with her.They were going to make her a test to check if she is the rigth girl for him.My favorite part of this book is when they put 20 mattresses in her bed, and in the bottom there was a pea.I didn't like when she used to cry for everything when it wasnt perfect.My favorite character is Lorelei because she will be a princess.The scene that meant a lot to me was pg.27.Its they are planning to do a pea test to her, so they could find out if she was a princess. This book is really great and its so romantic.But why did they had to put a lot of mattresses and only 1 pea.This book great for the princess lovers. I hope you enjoy this book as I did.

This book is great for when you're beginning Calculus, but it doesn't give intense hard problems for it. Great study guide to review the basics but isn't the hardcore stuff.

not that great, if you have a good text, you'll notice that the examples are pretty much the same

This book does provide coverage of all major material in traditional calculus,however the manner in which the material is presented is similar to that of a condensed textbook, which is neither entertaining nor completely clear. If you want a quick study guide then this is the book for you,provided you understand most information you read in a textbook. All in all, this book is alright, but I wouldn't depend solely on it.

I bought this book to supplement my class textbook when I was having trouble in Calculus I. I chose this book over the many other supplements available because I knew I could carry forward into Calculus II and Multivariable Calculus.
As mentioned in many other reviews, this book provides plenty of practice problems, so if you're having an issue in one particular area in class or in the class's textbook, this is a good place to go to really thoroughly understand it. They provide a decent number of examples and solutions. Within each chapter are explanations of the lesson, followed by example problems with step-by-step solutions, and finally "Supplementary Problems" for you to solve on your own (though there are no answers in the back for you to check your work). It's also got some really good lists of trig formulas, geometric formulas, common integrals, and common derivitives.
The only thing I dislike about the book is that the explanations are rather poor compared to a textbook, but it's hardly surprising seeing as how this is an outline and that it covers topics from the beginning of Calc I all the way through differential equations of first and second order in under 600 pages.
I would totally recommend this book for the student looking to supplement a confusing textbook, or looking to brush up on concepts that have gotten a little rusty.

In order to take an advanced statistics course (since I have been out of college awhile) I have to take a calculus test. They gave me a sample of 60 questions from prior years and recomended a text that cost $180!!!

Well for 1/15 of the price of the expensive text, I can get about 55 out of 60 questions answered through this one. The ones that are not covered in this book pertain to complex integrations - I'll buy the Schaum's Advanced Calc text and get my answers and still have tons of money left over.

*** Another thing is that the first few chapters are an excellent review of pre-calc, something I did not think I would need but it turns out to be more useful than I thought. ****

The covering of some topics, like LaHopital's rule is better than most texts.

I have not encountered typos yet - when I have that that I did - once I plunge into it more - turns out he is right and I was mistaken.

****Having numberous worked out problems and problems with at least the solutions to check yourself is GREAT FOR SELF STUDY ****

The Village of snettering-on-snoakes in the kingdom of Biddle,Rosella fetched water from the well for the four thousand and eighty-eigth time. Rosella always fetched the water because, her twin sister Myrtle,always refused to go do it.She let 2 cockroaches fall on the bed. Their mother was the widow pickering and never told Myrtle do anything and always told Rosella to do everything.Rosella wanted to reward Myrtle for fetching the water for the first time.Their Prince named Harold was called 'Maiden'. He was married to Rosella.

The Village of snettering-on-snoakes in the kingdom of Biddle,Rosella fetched water from the well for the four thousand and eighty-eigth time. Rosella always fetched the water because, her twin sister Myrtle,always refused to go do it.She let 2 cockroaches fall on the bed. Their mother was the widow pickering and never told Myrtle do anything and always told Rosella to do everything.Rosella wanted to reward Myrtle for fetching the water for the first time.Their Prince named Harold was called 'Maiden'. He was married to Rosella.

witty and humorous tale of unintended consequences, which applies to lots of other areas!

Hi this is a cute parody of a Grimm brother's tale: here the princess who drops gems whenever she speaks finds it more of a curse than a blessing, and the one cursed with spitting disgusting bugs finds ways to turn that to her advantage. The humor is cute, if a bit forced.

This is a very funny book. It tells about two sisters and a step mother who liked the younger sister better than Rosella. Rosella was kind to an old lady who was actually a nice magic fairy. The fairy gave her an award by making jewels pop out of her mouth when she sang or spoke. The handsome prince liked what he saw when he met Rosella some time later. Eventually they get married and live happily ever after.

The summer before high school, Alice and her friends Pamela and Elizabeth are determined to get ready. They begin a strict new regiment, jogging each day and cutting down on junk food.

But Elizabeth doesn't seem to know when to stop. Soon she's on the verge of an eating disorder and real emotional problems, and her friends don't know how to help her. And Pamela - rebelling against her life with her newly-divorced father - hides in Alice's house when her father comes looking for her, creating real problems for both herself and Alice.

Meanwhile, Alice and her friend Gwen volunteer at the local hospital, where Alice is overjoyed to meet up with her favorite elementary school teacher again. However, her happiness is shortlived when it's quickly apparent that Mrs. Plotkin's medical issues are quite severe...

Readers will enjoy hearing about Alice, who is just a regular girl facing ordinary problems, but in such a spirited and humorous way, they won't be able to stop until they find out Alice will, in fact, be okay in the end...

This is the second Alice book I've read (after Alice on the Outside) and NOW I understand the popularity of this series. I thought "Alice on the Outside" was a little too mature in subject matter, but "The Grooming of Alice" seemed exactly right.

Plus I really enjoyed this story a lot more. Many parts made me laugh out loud (and you really get some weird stares when you do that) and one part made me want to cry. When I get that involved with a story, I know it's good. Plus Alice's problems (and her friends' problems) seemed very realistic.

I enjoyed this book a whole lot and plan now to read the next Alice book. And the next...

The story was mostly about three girls names Alice, Pamela, and Elizabeth. The girls have known each other about three years. They have just come out of middle school and will be starting high school and decides they don't want to go into high school the same way they came out of middle school. They find so much wrong with themselves
( not so much Alice) that thye go on this diet or this excercis program together where they cut out sweets, pizza, and etc. and start jogging every morning. For Elizabeth this gets out of control and looses six pounds too much weight. While this is going on Alice and Pamela have other problems. Like, for instance Alice's summer job with her other friend named Gwen at the local hospital doing volunteer work. While at work Alice finds out that one of her sixth grade teachers is there and soon passes on. Now Pamela's mother ran off with her boyfriend to Colorado and she is also fighting with her dad. So this book is fiiled with drama. This ends when her dad decides to remarry and they are ready to go to the ninth grade.
I really enjoyed this book because it deals with some of the basic problems some of us teenagers are faced with day to day. I also enjoyes this book because of the ending and the way they dealed with their problems.

This great story and makes the reader feel confident. It also makes the reader blush redder, as I have said in my other reviews of the Alice books. Some may feel it is inapropriate, but I disagree without hesitation. It's not gross, it's realistic. A lot of girls are kissing their boyfriends on eyelids--not all of them, but a lot--and the descriptions of certain body parts at the YMCA are--again--realistic, that is what is going to happen if you go to those kinds of classes and are in a pretty serious relationship. If anything, this book and all the others in the series are PREPARING girls for what is going to take place as they mature. That's my opinon.

5 Stars!!!

BlEsSeD bE!!!

People who only rate "Classics" at 5 stars are missing a point. You should take a book for what it's supposed to be and decide how well it measured up to its own goal, otherwise all children's books would be two stars or less, when for children's books they are wonderful.

With that in mind, I give THE GROOMING OF ALICE four stars. It aimed to be informative, simple, cute, light and sweet, with a few morals slipped in too. It measured up to all those things quite nicely, but it lacked the creative, polished spark of Harry Potter or the beautiful writing of "Classics" such as THE GOLDEN COMPASS.

The sitcom-type story is played out well and deftly in a simple, sweet prose in Alice's first person--so far, so good. But the problem (and the reason I took off a star) is that the intended reader age is not clear. SOME people think that references to sex, explicit descriptions of body parts at a YMCA class Alice and her friends attend, anorexia and kissing 14-year-old boyfriends on eyelids at neighborhood pools make this book unsuitable for the under-13 crowd. And this must be hard for Miss Naylor, to write truthfully about what goes on with teenagers without being vulgar. However, the simple writing and continuation of a younger girls' series makes this book more appealing to girls age 10 and 11. Most people think that girls that age are too young to be hearing about the above issues so candidly explained. So, read the story and decide for yourself. You'll find it passes time most enjoyably.

Emacs comes with great documentation, and there is a ton of it on the web. Nevertheless a structured book that is well-designed with great illustrations and examples is priceless. Despite my level of skill with Emacs (I "live in Emacs," using it for all my basic computing tasks), I consult this book regularly. It's a regular part of my Emacs library!

This book covers more than just using the editor: building Emacs from source, the help system, and Emacs Lisp are covered as well. This book is always telling me about things that I didn't know Emacs could do.

Although I have read a few chapters from front-to-back, I mainly use this book as a reference.

It seemed odd to me during my Sophomore year at Penn State that the Computer Science Department wanted me to learn a text editor to do computer programming on UNIX computers. In the business classes students were taught to use an IDE on Windows computers. I remember asking myself why would I be one of the few to learn how to use a text editor to do computer programming when the masses where learning to use a GUI approach. I made up my mind that the computer scientists probably knew more about programming than the business professors, and taking the road less traveled has made all the difference.

While I am no where near a Emacs expert this book has made me into more than just a casual user. Learning how to do the keyboard macros has saved me countless hours of work over the years. Sometimes if I plan on doing a lot of typing for a business document I'll use emacs to get started so I don't have to lift my fingers off the keys, then paste the text into word for formatting.

Using this book to expand my previous knowledge of Emacs has had exponential return on investment. I highly recommend it, to anyone that is trying to learn or wants to improve their emacs skill level.

Most of the Unix/Linux senior level Wizzards that I know use Emacs and swear by it. There are others (vi users especially) who swear at it, but that's another story. Emacs is a huge package and is growing bigger. Although you can consider it a text editor, it's a big, massive package that does a lot more than just edit text.

At the start of the book the authors comment "Many people think that Emacs is an extremely difficult editor to learn. We don't see why." I think the WHY is that most people start with a simpler more fundamental text editor like vi. Then when they think of moving to Emacs their fingers have to un-learn the vi commands to replace them with the Emacs commands. The authors say they don't recommend the vi emulation mode built into Emacs, but fingers sometimes take a long time to un-learn.

If you've just decided to move to Linux, you might want to start with Emacs and never go the vi route. There is no question that Emacs has more power. Comparing to the Microsoft world, I think of vi like NotePad, while Emacs is like Word.

There's an interesting table near the front of the book that asks you what you want to do with Emacs. If you want to write HTML, read Preface and Chapters 1-3 & 8. Then after you are getting some work out of the package, you can go to other chapters as you need them - Chapter 12, for instance to use Emacs to compare files.

About half the book is on 'simple' text editing, where their 'simple' maybe isn't as 'simple' as the rest of us consider 'simple.' I do a lot of SQL, Chapter 9 talks about the editing support for SQL, and for other programming environments like Perl, Lisp, JDEE, etc.

This book is from O'Reilly. O'Reilly does professional quality books for professional programmers. If it's time to learn Emacs, you can't do better than this.

LEARNING GNU EMACS is an introduction to the most powerful text editor ever made, a fully-programmable environment that through contributions from thousands has become something of an operating system in itself. This third edition covers all the new enhancements made in version 21.3.

The book begins with an introduction to Emacs as it : a text editor. It gives basic commands for moving around, describes the look of the user interface, teaches how to search and replace, and how to make simple (and not-so-simple) macros. But Emacs isn't just a simple text editor, it also has extensions to do everything from drawing simple pictures to managing your schedule. In the next portion the book describes among other things Dired, the Emacs file manager, the calendar and diary functions, and how to execute commands from within Emacs.

Since Emacs functions as an integrated-development environment for many programming languages, a fairly large portion of the book focus on how Emacs can help the software developer. Concerning markup languages, this new edition covers the excellent nxml mode for XML documents, and in terms of computer languages it describes modes for C, C++, Java, Perl, SQL, and Lisp. Unfortunately, the Python mode is not discussed. An entire chapter is devoted to Emacs' interface to version control systems like CVS.

The book doesn't aim itself at only a beginner's market. It teaches one already proficient in editing to customize Emacs. At the simplest, this means tinkering with one's "~/.emacs" file, but it also includes using the power of Lisp to change all aspects of Emacs.

This book could only be perfect if it were twice as large as it is now, since Emacs has so much in it. I think it a pity that the book doesn't cover Gnus, a mail and news reader that takes advantage of Emacs' scriptable nature to offer immense configurability and power. In fact, it doesn't cover the popular Mew mail reader or Emacs' limited built-in mail reader at all. Also, the bit on search and replace doesn't give any small intro to regular expressions.

Emacs is not for everyone, and even with a fine book like this some people are not going to like it. But if you are comfortable doing basic editing with Emacs, and want to maximize your efficiency, then LEARNING GNU EMACS can help.

If a person is thinking of learning GNU Emacs, or if they have been using it and are looking to sharpen their skills and broaden their Emacs savvy, it is a fairly safe assumption that the individual is motivated. This person probably knows their way around a command prompt, and it is likely that they are aware that Lisp is more than just a speech impediment. This person needs a book that offers expert advice without wasting time or insulting the intellect of the reader. Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition is that book.

As a programmer, when firing up a monolithic word processor or graphical IDE to edit a simple script or properties file, one cannot help but wonder if these tools aren't overkill much of the time. For a growing number of users, the answer is yes. The tried-and-true text editor is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. One of the most extensible and customizable applications in the text editing category is the venerable GNU Emacs.

The tutorials and documentation for Emacs are abundant, but they often prove time-consuming and ineffective for actually learning Emacs. This book is a refreshing break from the documentation many have come to expect. Imagine you had a consortium of leading experts on Emacs at your disposal to teach you how to use it in a conversational, consultative style. That is what has been bundled into this latest edition of the book.

The extensibility of Emacs has been both a key strength and a criticism of the application. Its user and developer community have created all sorts of additional capabilities for Emacs, ranging from the impressive to the absurd. The authors have done well to judiciously select what to cover in this edition. For example, while Emacs does have the capability to function as an email client, other applications have long superceded its ability. The authors have chosen not to cover this topic, and instead devote the available space to learning Emacs' core functionality - powerful, efficient text editing. Other peripheral areas of Emacs have been left for the user to research after gaining their solid foundation on Emacs as editor and work environment, such as compatibility modes for programming languages other than Java and Perl.

This edition of the book uses the space gained by the removal of esoteric topics to flesh out areas of more common interest. Integration with the major version control systems has been expanded to include Subversion alongside of the age-old standards CVS, RCS, and SCCS. Coverage of support for Java and Perl has also improved, as well as sections for editing HTML and XML. Users wanting to tap into the power of Lisp programming for Emacs should find the coverage satisfying as well.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of this book is the chapter devoted to the use of Emacs on different platforms. Unix, Windows and Mac OS X users receive equal acknowledgement. The precautions and insights regarding Emacs nuances when used on particular platforms can reduce users' frustration when getting started with Emacs.

Even current Emacs users can benefit from this work. The mnemonic devices and conventions used in the book allow users to commit useful keyboard commands to memory. The memorization is further solidified by the exercises sprinkled appropriately through each chapter. Readers do not go for very many pages before it is time to be at the keyboard again, harnessing the power of muscle memory to reinforce the material presented.