Walsh Books

This is a fair book. I would go as far telling the average WWII buff that this book should only be checked out of your local library.

The one big problem with this book is it gives no individual stories from either the Russian or German soldiers. While we know the average soldier on both sides had a grim lot in life (more up to date ex-Soviets records show that government lost near 1 million people retaking the city; life was cheap). However, this book does not show any individual struggles. So, we get to know none of the personal struggles of either sides.

The book does go quite well into the techniques of both the Soviet and German chain of command. I quite liked that, there is rare insight into the operational techniques of the old German Heer or of the Russian Army. A normal reader will take away quite of those lessons in this book.

Also, the book does tell of the problems the Germans had with the geographical location of Stalingrad and the reason why they could not take the city. Basically, Stalingrad was a long spread out city along the Volga river. Stalingrad was over 20 miles long by the west bank of the Volga but only 4 miles deep to the west of the Volga. The Germans are unable to encircle and reduce the city by seige. Later, the German fixation on Stalingrad allows the Russians to counter attack by crossing the Don River and encircle the Germans.

Geography and operational strategy are the main lessons of this book. In addition, a good review of the German and Soviet command officers is done in this book.

However, I was a little unhappy with it at the end. The book is a little disjointed in its writing style. There are no individual stories that make books like this a very engaging read.

So my rating is three stars. Save your money and get it from the library.

This is really a picture book with commentary, not the other way around. True, the photos arwe good. But if you want to lean something substantial about the wretchedness of Stalingrad and the failed strategies that caused it, and the brilliance of the tenacious Soviets, go elsewhere. Read Anthony Beevor, Joel Hayward, David Glantz, John Ericson. Or read General Chuikov's masterpiece, '''The Beginning Of The Road'''

This book serves to capture some of the drama that was the battle of Stalingrad. It fails, however, to leave the reader with an understanding of the horror of war or a clear view of what events were critical.

"The Infernal Cauldron" is long on detail as to the specific movement of troops but, in so doing, serves to lose the reader from the bigger picture. We are constantly updated as to where particular Armies and Divisions were moving but are shown few maps. The reader is thus easily lost in the minutae without developing a fuller understanding of the battle.

Offsetting the flaws of detail, the book has numerous glossy black and white photos that show some of the key players such as Paulus and his generals. It also reproduces other photos of the phenomenal destruction that was unleashed on this one city.

Finally, as with all books on the subject of Stalingrad, comparison with Antony Beevor's great work is inevitable. In this regard, Walsh demonstrably fails. Read Beevor if you want to understand and try to comprehend the war for and the siege of Stalingrad.

I am not going to repeat observations made by earlier reviewers and which I felt were quite accurate (e.g. nice pictures, dry prose, errors etc..). I am an avid WW2 reader and I must say that this book failed to engage and get my interest. I found the lack of maps which follow the narrative disconcerting given the assumed scholarly background of the author. Few sources are cited, and when they are, it's in trivial statements like "in the words of prof. X, from this point on, the Yth army group didn't have the resources to carry its mission". Finally, I found the way the distances were indicated extremely irritating, e.g., the 6th army only advanced 274m (300 yards)???? Where did all these signifcant digits come from? You should know that ALL the distances mentioned in the book are cited this way. Decent editing should not have allowed this to be.

I was pleased to see Dr Joel Hayward's review of this book below. His own book "STOPPED AT STALINGRAD: The Luftwaffe and Hitlers Defeat in the East" (also available from Amazon.com) is, alongside John Erickson's book, easily the best book on Stalingrad. I strongly recommend these Stalingrad authors as best: Joel Hayward, Anthony Beevor, John Erickson, Graig. Your library is not complete without all these.

But when we look at this book, by Stephen Walsh, we find a different type of book. It focuses too much on ground operations, ignoring the Red Air Force (VVS) and the Luftwaffe. And it is weak on explaining strategy. To counter these weaknesses are terrific black and white photos, many of them appearing in print for the first time.

Walsh's narrative is average. You won't find it as thorough and authoritative as Hayward's or as compelling and racy as Beevor's, but it does the job.

Overall, I still recommend this book and give it 4 stars.

It has been nearly fifty years since I read this book. I had forgotten how much detail Butler placed in his research of the lives of the saints. Although my mind has moved more towards agnosticism, it is of great interest for me to read how the Church appreciated the lives of some of its past members. I am now trying to read of the saints related to that day, but alas my schedule is too busy to read the entire selection.

The rating of 3 stars does not reflect THE BOOK - actually, I have another copy of this book and love it. However, I ordered (I THOUGHT) A LARGE PRINT EDITION. Your presentation on line was very confusing. I requested large print offerings, and, found that not everything that came up for perusal was large print. I made the mistake of selecting what I thought WAS large print only to find, upon receipt, that it was not. I was purchasing this book as a gift for my neighbor who desired a book about the lives of the saints in large print because he is legally blind and cannot read the normal type. For that reason I rated my experience as a 3 because I am disappointed. I AM STILL LOOKING FOR A BOOK ABOUT SAINTS IN LARGE PRINT AND WOULD APPRECIATE ANY HELP YOU CAN GIVE ME. R. Ford

Butler's Lives of the Saints: New Concise Ed., edited by Paul Burns, ISBN 0-8146-2903-2, Copyright 2003

Consider another book. Despite "Butler's" being in the title, it seems to bear no relation to the Butler's Lives of the Saints published in the 1950s and 1800s.

Defects:
1. There is no index or alphabetical list of saints. If you want to look up a saint by name, you have to scan the list of 366 saints in the table of contents, which is six pages long. An index would have provided quick access.

2. Saints are not listed under their actual commemoration day. Why? Because the saints did not "die on conveniently spaced dates" (page xi). Nothing in the description of the saint alerts you to the date being wrong. To determine the correct day, you have to closely read a paragraph at the beginning of the month.

3. The book does not bear an imprimatur from a bishop or "nihil obstat" showing that it's free from error. To illustrate why this is a problem, one-third of the entry for St. Maria Goretti is not about her; it's a critique of her sainthood and of the Church. Example: in "feminist circles ... Maria has been seen more as a martyr to patriarchal society" (p. 310).

The good news is that Butler's Lives continues to be a popular brand name over 100 years after its first edition; the bad news is that many of its revised editions aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Not so with this red cover "concise edition" from 1985 (ISBN-10: 0060692510.) It retains the verve, clarity, and style of the original four volumes in a single-volume format. If you are an Anglophile or have an interest in English Catholicism, this edition is especially attractive; editor Michael Walsh includes many saints from British history, and the book comes with a foreword by the late Cardinal Basil Hume. Its main drawback is the inclusion of only one saint per day. This means, for example, that on June 22's memorial of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher just one man -- Fisher -- is described. No book or format is perfect, however. So look for the red cover, and learn to love your faith from the saints.

I just love this book. I bought McBrien's Lives of the Saints at the same time and this one is far superior in that it is scholarly without losing its spirituality. You get more than just a biographical sketch, you also get a sense of the spirit of each saint, including quotations. The quality of the paper, printing and binding is superior as well---this book will last for generations. I am now saving up for the 12-volume unabridged set!

[...]

I picked this book up about three years to late, as it is entirely written about the original IBuySpy Portal framework, and I am an avid DotNetNuke module developer. The author presents numerous great examples of custom module development for IBuySpy, including a simple library application, extended discussions module, a complex Human Resources module, and a great Document Management System. Keep in mind IBuySpy is the forerunner to DotNetNuke, and all of the modules outlined in the book port nicely to the newer architecture, as they leverage many of the features moved forward into DotNetNuke, like user account integration, portal security, and more.

As I worked through configuring the various samples provided with the book, I got to set up & play with the original IBuySpy Portal framework after nearly three years of playing with it for the for the first time. When it was first released, it very intimidating in some of it's implementation details, although it didn't appear as sophisticated in it's business architecture, unlike the original Reports, Time Tracking, & Issue Tracking kits.

The book provides one of the best guides I have read to everything IBuySpy. The second time looking at IBuySpy portal, I was more able to appreciate the great concepts introduced in it, and I was at times amazed at how simple the IBuySpy Portal is when compared to the latest version of DotNetNuke. With the Introduction of the DotNetNuke Data Access Layer (DAL) in version 2.x, DotNetNuke was able to encapsulate all of the sophistication, and more, of the business layer found in the Time Tracking/Reports starter kits, at which point I was hooked.

I found the Document Management System described in Chapter 9 sophisticated enough that I believed it was worth the effort to convert it to a modern DotNetNuke module. The module is very well designed and documented in the book, so I decided on an uneventful Sunday afternoon to start converting it. Approximately 40 hours of development later, I have completed converting the module to DotNetNuke 2.1.2 (DotNetNuke 3.0.9 was released two days before the writing of this review).

I bought this book for 62 Euros (75 USD) in Lisbon that is too much for 450 pages (with promos, content, indexes, images from internet) book without any CD and with broken promise of the downloadable code!

IMHO, there was no need to bloat the volume of a book and reader's tiredness reprinting from internet the lengthy code examples just for the sake of a few modifications and after that again printing, again, the resulting snippets (it is proper only for e-books)

Since the book is oriented for working with codes, the absence of electronic version is also the great drawback.

The book seems to be the monopolist on IBuySpy Portal (the only one available) , but I wouldn't have bought it, had I known about mentioned above.

While the book is useful (in abscence of any other choice, esp. in electronic version), I estimate the ratio "price/worthyness" as extremely high

PS
I was also more interested in C# and/or Visual Studio .NET versions of IBuySpy Portal, and I think VB.NET is just inappropriate language for the middle-, like IBuySpy Portal,
and large-size projects)

In order to use this book effectively, you really need a good understanding of SQL and SQL stored procedures. The book isn't for SQL Beginners. The tables come from WROX without the identities being set, so you will need to know how to do that. The book also requires a good understanding of stored procedures, you will need to know how to fix the stored procedure if it isn't working correctly. The easy way to work with the stored procedures and all of the changes the WROX programmers made to IBUYSPY is to load their backup database onto your server using a different database name, then import the tables and stored procedures you need into your Portal database. There are some problems with the code that requires revising the name spaces and assembly references to get them to work with the ASPNET Portal, but once modified the code does work well for the most part. I really wish the WROX programmers had spent more time on the RTF piece. I eventually replaced the RTF functionality with someone else's software, but I have to admit that I learned alot about ASP.NET controls by examining the WROX RTF code. The document management piece is worth the price of the book. The documentation really is not very good but if you study the code, you'll learn alot. I disagree strongly with the reviewer who stated this is for people who want code but don't want to learn what it does. If you can make the WROX code work, you're doing pretty well.

I bought this book because I have been thrust into the Intranet development world, and I really don't have a lot of experience building multi-functional web pages. I bought this book to really help me understand the IBuySpy portal, and I have used it to customize that package for a couple of different web sites now.

The Good:
The book is very good at explaining the various components of the IBuySpy Portal. It's a lot like a tourist map; highlighting certain pieces (while complete overlooking other aspects).

The Bad:
As others have noted, this book doesn't go deep into explaining ASP.NET, or how to use classes in the .NET architecture. It merely allows you to copy a lot of code, cross your fingers, and see something work.

The Ugly:
As with most "best-of-breed" solutions from Microsoft, stuff breaks. While this particular manual does point out why some stuff doesn't work as well as intended, it doesn't go into a lot of detail (and don't expect it to catch everything).

In Sum: Buy this book if you have a need to get an intranet up and running quickly, and want to impress your non-developer friends. Don't buy it if you're expecting to use it to learn ASP.NET.

If you wish to understand the IBUY Portal, don't count on this book to help you. I didn't like the style and structure of this book. I got the sense that this book was just another rush publication with a group of programmers getting together, assigning chapters with desired content and then got down to pulling and writing code.

WROX needs to do a better job of controlling quality and up front planning for their books. Sorry, but this book shows none of that. The design of the existing site was mostly crammed into a single chapter. A decent database diagram was not included and no UML or other diagrams were presented so we could easily understand the Object architecture. Instead, the documentation was simply a straight lift from sql server table descriptions. I found myself drawing my own diagrams as I went through the book. An architect's perspective was desparately needed in this first chapter.

I won't be buying any more WROX books if things don't improve by enforcing good technical writing standards for their publications.

This book provides a lot of information about Perl/Tk, but in a somewhat scattered fashion, making true mastery of the subject an intensive process. It is an excellent learning tool, but the reader should be aware that there is much to learn beyond what is presented here.

I'm a big fan of the O'Reilly Perl books. Most of them are very well written, and can really increase your knowledge about a topic. But this book is an exception. Simply put, it's horrible. Don't buy this book. It's poorly written, has a bad style, and provides nothing that you couldn't easily get from online documentation.

This book tries to be all things to all people. "Learning Perl/Tk" needs to be reworked to be more of a tutorial in the same spirit as "Learning Perl." "Mastering Perl/Tk" needs to be split into two works--one like "Programming Perl" and another like "Perl in a Nutshell." It's hard to master Perl/Tk when you have to try to swallow it all in one gulp. It can be done, but you may suffer with a case of indigestion for a while.

This book is heavily redundant to Learning Perl/Tk. I would say about 1/3 of the book is new content, of which the majority is poorly organized.

Textual content is written in a teaching context.

In the examples there are a lot of things being done implicitly, and comments are lacking. This defeats much of the teaching functionality of the textual content that references to the examples.

The custom widget section, is some of the most disorganized technical writing I've seen. Things that should be footnotes are left as content. In my copy of chapter 14, if you were to couple the X'd out superfluous language with the pencil notes in the margin used to decipher the remaining text (after referencing _Programming Perl_, the POD and usenet) you would nearly equal the content of the author.

They appear to have been stretching for length like a freshman year term paper, Noted by the 75 pages of options tables in the rear that are redundant to the core widget option tables in the front, or otherwise straight out of the POD.

This book leaves a lot of room for a competing title. There is however none at this time to my knowledge. Therefore buy it anyway, if you plan on working heavily in Perl/Tk.

To use the word "Mastering" in the title is begging criticism. If you are looking for a definative work, this isn't it. But it is available, and will get you through the first half of your head scratching while developing with Perk/Tk.

This book has so far given me all the information I've
needed to write usable GUIs. However, I share the concern
expressed by other reviewers that the the titles 'Learning
Perl/Tk' and 'Mastering Perl/Tk' can be misleading. While
it's reasonable to assume that the 'Learning' volume is
introductory/tutorial while the 'Mastering' volume is for
advanced techniques, this is not the case. The 'History of
this Book' section of the preface describes it as an
expansion of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not a sequel or supplement.
There is no need to buy both books.

Walsh and Middleton, famed for their work on The Transforming Vision, have continued in their endeavor to wrestle with Christian faith in light of our present culture.

By starting off with an excellent overview of how we came to be in the state we now know as "postmodernity", Walsh and Middleton write a scathing attack on modernity. The reader becomes relived when we can appreciate that in fact there are many good things to which we may bid farewell in modernity. The concept of the autonomous, objective self is replaced by cultural and worldview lenses. Here is where Walsh and Middleton are strongest and where this is in many ways a continuation of The Transforming Vision - they employ the concept of the "Wordview" to show that Christianity is also one among many worldviews.

How this worldview is enacted in culture is the second part of the book. Ultimately, it is not just a "view" but a perspective that is told through stories - narratives. The Christian story is a narrative through which we continue to live out.

This is where the more dubious idea of the "biblical metanarrative" is described in the book. Postmodernity is precisely a rejection of ANY metanarrative, particularly the modern metanarrative of the objective, autonomous human who can manipulate nature and know truth objectively. And it is a metanarrative that has often co-opted Christian faith over the past few hundred years. While Walsh and Middleton acknowledge that this is true, they nonetheless make a case that the best way to express the Christian faith is to live out the biblical metanarrative of the faith in our culture. I find their argument that a maetanarrative can be proclamed as normative to not be entirely convincing. They argue that by its nature of being an inclusive, non-human centred narrative that it can appeal to the postmodern mind. I do not see how this is going to be convincing as a normative claim.

With that said, it is one of the better books to wrestle with the philosophies of our age. And I applaud them for it.

I loved reading this book. It begins with a review of modernity, and explains how it is based on "the progress myth." Essentially the notion that science will win out. It accepts the pitfals of this position and then develops the postmodern response. The authors then point out that postmodernity is also based on a flawed myth. Orthodox christianity is developed as an alternative- based on a true myth. Much better than a call to return to the good old days.

Middleton and Walsh demonstrate a solid knowledge of the postmodern (poststructuralist) critique of truth. And they are correct is asserting that this critique must be dealt with as Christians, not dismissed. I would even join them in agreeing that truth, though it may exist, cannot be known without the uncertainty generated by our contextualized perspectives on truth.

However, I disagree with the step that Middleton and Walsh take in casting the claims of Christianity as therefore preferable over other claims because of the salutary benefits of Christian claims. In other words, the inaccessibility of truth may result in power-backed claims to truth winning out over the truth claims of the weak simply because it's all about power, but I don't agree that Christianity should therefore get positive points because it is the religion of the weak and marginalized.

That's rhetoric, or sophistry. Christianity deserves an audience for its claims because many of its claims reflect the completely legitimate conclusions to be drawn from a real story that began long ago and continues today. That is the story of the relationship between God and man. This story is recounted by many people - by Jewish leaders during Seder meals, by the Biblical authors, by Brian McLaren in his recent book The Story We Find Ourselves In, and so on.

Each of these people bring their perspectives to their retelling of the story, but the story exists in external reality just as much as your computer screen does. The story must be engaged with - to completely deny the story requires doubting consciousness and thereby doubting the presence of reality. And that's a legitimate conclusion, as long as your honest about its implications for your life.

The humility that a poststructuralist brings to discourse over the stories that comprise reality, a humility generated by awareness of one's perspective, is what animates a postmodern approach to Christian theology. Middleton and Walsh's approach is animated by the rhetorical strategies of those who seek to capitalize on the newfound inaccesibility of truth by portraying their truth claim as more beneficial or salutary than others.

This book purports to be both a critique of Postmodern culture and a Biblical path into the future. In the end it is an almost total acceptance of the postmodern revolt against enlightenment rationalism, complete with the implication that the Christian church of the last few centuries is hopelessly absorbed into that "enlightenment project".

While the authors do a bit of critique of the fringes of radical PM, they have totally woven themselves into the garment. True to the more radical positions of the PM movement, the assumption is that that we have two choices and only two - Modernist arrogance or Postmodern subjectivity. While they authors accept the PM notion that all "totalizing" systems are evil, they blindly swallow the most totalizing and destructive notion of all, that we are hopelessly locked into subjectivity about anything and everything.

In addition, regular usage of left of center code words such as "victim", "oppressor", "violence" and "terror" show the real cards the authors are holding. If you have a position of power or influence it is assumed you MUST be an oppressor, you have no choice because of your Western Enlightenment cultural arrogance. If you suggest you know something truly, you are part of the enlightenment system "totalizing" intellectual constructivism and thus of violent oppression. Simply asserting that something is true is an act of intellectual violence, which crushes the dignity of someone else whose viewpoint is different.

Their solution is to embrace the metanarrative of the Biblical story, in which the oppressed and suffering Israelites are rescued from Egypt, or in which Christ's identification with the poor and oppressed lights a path to radical equality. So they suggest a third alternative in a Biblical Metanarrative, but even that solution assumes the very philosophy they supposedly are critiquing.

In the end, though much is said about the Bible, since nothing can be deemed objective, the Bible cannot be used to test and evaluate the validity of Socrates, Bacon, Derrida, Foucault or anyone else. Scripture is just another story that may be intriguing and in fact unique because it seems to suggest answers that are not "oppressive" to the "marginalized". The proposed answer is to subjectively enter the "story" of the text and creatively write new chapters of the history of salvation based on what is in the end, very squishy and uncertain estimations of what God might be doing.

Thus PM eisogesis is imposed on the text. The Old Testament is not a story of human rebellion against God and honest records of triumphs and failings of fallen humans, rather it is reinterpreted from a PM viewpoint as a story of God's actions to right injustice and thwart the oppression of the marginalized by the unjust rulers. In the NT Christ's resurrection has more to do with identifying with the poor and oppressed than any 2000-year-old orthodox sense of atoning for personal sin.

The difference between these ramblings and the prophetic (though not flawless) analysis of someone like Francis Schaeffer is that Schaeffer rejected BOTH modernist rationalism AND the growing rejection of and "escape from" reason. As fallen and finite beings we can never know exhaustively or perfectly, but we can know sufficiently and truly - objectivity is imperfect, but not an illusion.

This inability of PM thinkers to see culture and personal perspective as an influence on but not a complete destruction of objective reality is frightening. It is also silly. Try as the PM advocates might to deny reality, it ends up crashing down on them eventually.

I suppose I could go down to my bank and suggest to the officers there that my perception of my account balance is quite different from their totalizing linguistic construct. As they try to toss me out on my ear, I could protest that their objective reading of the data is hopelessly enmeshed in their modernist illusions of objectivity and certainty and such totalizing views of mathematics and western economics are oppressive and violent to my freedom and dignity and economic well being. I could suggest that they should identify with my oppressed state. Of course the violence they would do to me at that point would go beyond language games. And the objective reality of my actual account balance would not bend to my subjective construction of it.

Modernism may need correcting, but intellectual suicide is not the answer.

To a certain extent, the title says it all. The truth is stranger than it used to be. Who would have ever guessed that there would be a book that takes both the postmodern intellectual paradigm and the evangelical sense of the Bible seriously? And yet, here it is. Perhaps this is a testament to both the resilency of the Bible in the face of even the most monumental of paradigm shifts in cultural and intellectual history, as well as an admission on the other hand that postmodernity is 'here to stay', and the differing intellectual pieces that make up postmodernism must be addressed, not ignored.

Authors Middleton and Walsh ask in the first chapter four key questions, that they put in context of the controversy over honouring the discovery of Columbus in 1992. Whereas in the not-too-distant America, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the New World would have been heralded as an historical success, in the growing postmodernity sensibility, the varying interpretations of Columbus (the destruction of Native America, the original intention of colonialism and resource exploitation, the fact that others had in fact 'discovered' America first, etc.) made sure than no particular view held sway. This was new -- we no longer knew who we were. Who are we? Where are we? What's wrong? What's the remedy? These are the key questions, and in typical postmodern fashion, they are deceptively simple in construction, and nearly impossible to answer completely.

Whereas modernity saw society as always in progress, a sense of continuing evolution toward the better, postmodernity saw the failures of this -- empires fall and don't always lead to better situations; science cannot in fact answer all questions and solve all problems; reason and intelligence and individuality are not the unqualified 'goods' that the Enlightenment made them out to be. But not only is our worldview different, but how reality is constructed and deconstructed is different (can there be a book on postmodernism that does not reference Derrida? If there were, would it be worth anything?). The self becomes de-centered, and objective history and society gives way to narrative -- Middleton and Walsh reference Alistair MacIntyre's significant work 'After Virtue', which, while far from being a postmodern book, anticipates much of postmodernism's interest in recovering useful aspects of the ancient and pre-modern. One of the concerns of postmodernism in relation to narrative is the distrust of the universalising and totalising nature of metanarratives, i.e., making all things fit into one story, usually told one way.

The authors an interlude serving as a bridge between the two primary sections of the text, here to examine a few crucial points, one of which being an obvious problem -- if postmodernism is suspicious of metanarrative, how can Christianity and its attendant scriptures have any real authority, being one of the greater and more powerful metanarratives in human history?

Middleton and Walsh suggest that metanarratives may be pharmacological in nature -- take enough and it is a remedy, take the wrong dose, and it is poisonous, even fatal. One thing vital to the biblical project of the authors is that this become not just a story, but our story, something that we not only believe and espouse, but inside of which we dwell. Referencing such biblical scholars as Brueggeman and Trible, Middleton and Walsh acknowledge the need to be honest about the diversity within the scriptures and the sometimes terrible texts included.

There is an overall chiastic structure to the book, akin to various biblical passages in both testaments. Middleton and Walsh look for internal norms and guidance from scripture -- while these might be arguable, they correctly identify that postmodernism in-and-of-itself does not provide a norma normans. One criticism of Middleton and Walsh's overall approach is that they tend to see postmodernism as more monolithic than in fact it is; perhaps this owes more to the structure and limitations of the text than to their actual views.

Ultimately, Middleton and Walsh look at the biblical texts in ways that probably become too liberal for most strive to see the Bible as an inerrant text. However, it would be hard for anyone to say that the biblical text is not taken seriously, both as a normative document and as a living embodiment of God's word. Perhaps God is, in God's own self, postmodern, defying conventional notions of foundation and totalising -- the fact that God created things that are not God might speak to this.

A fascinating text.

The constant inclusion of the author's religious opinons dilutes the content and distracts any reader who may be interested in learning the storyteller's art. Any reader who indeed is interested in learning more about the reader's religous opinions would, of course, be delighted.

All in all, the book would not be helpful to anyone other than a total beginner at storytelling and even for the beginner, there must be better sources.
Paul Baum, Ph.D.
Living Historyist

After reading this book, you realize clearly that critics from Sweden exist in all manners of life and even though they need these books more than others, their blindness keeps them from recognizing how to see grace in life and share it with others. Don't be influenced by the review above.

This was an excellent, practical book that really did help me learn to communicate better with my class of young children. My husband, a pastor, also improved his sermons! We hope to use this book to teach a workshop on storytelling skills.

The preceding two reviews are each from opposite camps, and are both equally useless. One says the book is completely bad because of its religious bias, which I don't think is fair or accurate. The other review says that the first reviewer is wrong good without any discussion of why. This book is not useless, even to those outside it's target audience; neither is it particularly good even for that audience, and I dispute the implied claim that being written from a Christian perspective makes it inherently better than a similar secular book.

What this book suffers from is not bad writing; it's a bad title and description. This is NOT a secular book. While it's an exaggeration to say that God or Jesus are mentioned in every line, this is quite clearly written by a Christian, for other Christians, and the entire work is steeped in biblical references.

However, that doesn't make it a "piece of crap." What it does make it is a poorly-titled and (at least here on Amazon) -marketed book. This work should state its bias, if not in the title, then at least in the subtitle. It is NOT a general guide on storytelling, which is what both its title and ad blurb appear to indicate. It contains enough Christian references to distract even most Christians I know, never mind someone not from that religious tradition. And that is exactly what Christianity is; a religious tradition. It is NOT the one and only source of grace or divinity.

So, that statement ought to help you determine whether you can get any use from this book. If you read that and said, "blasphemy," or regarded the statement as a one-way ticket south for my soul, this is probably right up your alley. If you said, "hmmm. he may have a point," be wary of this book. And if you said, "right on," or any permutation thereof, steer clear.

That said, it's not badly written, although there's nothing here you won't find in a half-dozen other books on storytelling. In fact, unless non-biblical stories are patently offensive to you, I would say many of the others would probably serve you better (Ramon Ross' "Storyteller" is particularly good, as is Jack Maguire's "Creative Storytelling"). They contain more in the way of actual advice.

Basically, what this book has going for it is precisely what the marketing of it seems to have ignored; it's storytelling advice told from a Christian (and, while I don't know the author's background, I would guess somewhere far right at that; you know, the kind of folks who use the word "grace" regularly, and they're serious) perspective.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, you'll probably enjoy this book.

I bought this book to learn to improve my storytelling skills but all I got was a book about jesus and god where I can't relate to at all.
Every sentence of this book is about God and priests.
Now I can see how storytelling could be a good thing for priests to learn, but in that case the book should still be objective and maybe at the end have a special chapter how this can be used for priest, but instead this is a book only for priests and fanatics which you can maybe translate into other uses.

So sure, if you are not a priest you may still be able to use this if you put extra much effort to think how this can be used in other ways than just telling the bible, but I would rather recommend you to get a real book written by someone how takes his time to think about the answer of the stuff he writes about instead of just saying it's gods will.

I began reading the Stoics to get background on St. Paul's evangelistic sermon in Athens (Acts 17), in which Stoics and Epicureans are among his partners in dialogue, but am finding these folks fascinating in their own right. Cicero and Seneca were in the thick of messy imperial politics, which takes some of the gloss off their otherwise attractive (at least in Seneca's case) maxims and ideals; as with Aristotle, you want to ask, "If education is the key to virtue, how did this wise man teach such a ruthless thug as Nero / Alexander?"

The Nature of the Gods was, in any case, great for my study. A Stoic, an Epicurean, and a skeptic who moonlights as a priest (!) meet in a private home to debate the reality and nature of God and the gods. No punchline here -- each disputant takes the time to develope his arguments in detail, in often lively prose. Often the debate about "faith" and "reason," myth and history, design and accident, seems surprisingly contemporary. The book also helped me make sense of Paul's line of argument in Acts, and by implication the success of Christianity. Thoughtful Romans were looking for a God they could believe in; I can almost imagine that Paul put his brief together after reading Book II, and parts of Book III, of Cicero's work.

The tone is civil, cosmopolitan, literate, with frequent quotations from the poets and references to mythology. (Which no one present takes seriously -- except metaphorically.)

Some of the skeptical parts of Book III also still bite. Why does God allow the wicked to prosper, and the good to perish? The ancients are still worth reading, not in a condescending way as primitive philosophy and bad science, but appreciated for their insights into fundamental questions, and even for some good guesses about Nature. (Cicero knows earth is much smaller than the sun, and round, for example -- though the Stoics think it round IN PART because sphericity is the ideal shape! Strict diets not being a priority in the ancient world.)

I admire Cicero and and I like THE NATURE OF THE GODS, but I give it 2 stars because of the poor translation, which renders a lucid book intolerably boring. So, please throw away the PENGUIN edition and check out the same title by OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSCIS translated by P.G.Walsh. After you have compared the two editions, you will realize the weakness of J.M.Ross' translation.

Cicero's "De Natura Deorum" is a work the great orator used to present his own position towards philosophy, the gods, and how they work in the universe and in the lives of individuals. Cicero presents his thesis by opening a dialogue between three distinguished philosophers from the major schools of the first century BC: namely the Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics. Velleius, in book one, expounds upon the general tenets of the Epicureans; in book two, Balbus the Stoic in turn attempts to refute the claims made by Velleius; and finally, in book three, Cotta takes the position of the Academics, which should be understood as Cicero's opinions himself. If judged correctly, Cicero's opinions are quite clear, but they should be left for the reader to discover on his own. As pure philosophy, this book obviously lacks merit; but as for creativity and sheer eloquence Cicero's work will make for an entertaining and insightful read, especially as an introductory to the philosophical maxims during the decay of the Roman Republic. Despite the works lack of philosophical ingenuity, its influence may possibly be greater than what is customarily maintained, since it is likely that "De Naturae Deorum" impacted Boethius in writing his "Consolation of Philosophy." First of all, both works address many of the same issues, and secondly in their literary style they both use prose and verse to convey meaning. Overall, this work will make for a comforting, and at times insightful read; this will be an essential addition to the classical library.

If you're like me, you were brought up thinking the ancients understood God(s) in terms of their old polytheistic mythology. In fact quaint village myths didn't make it in the large cities. The idea of a single High God predated Christianity by centuries, and was in fact central to mainstream ancient philosophies / theologies you've probably heard of: Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism.

For us, religion and revelation are inseparable. Christianity, Islam, Bahai-ism, Mormonism are "revealed" religions, based on the God's direct revelation through his Son or Prophet -- Jesus, Mohamed, Bahaulla, Joseph Smith. The Greeks and Romans didn't have "revealed" religions. They had to work out their ideas of meaning and divinity without a solid, revealed, starting place. In a world without revealed religion, the ancient philosophers tried to figure out, What is God? Amazing.

If you're interested in how the ancients understood God, Cicero's book, The Nature of the Gods, is a great read. It's basically a synopsis of ancient philosophies / theologies. It will change your understanding of the history of western religious thought.

Listen to Cicero [106 - 43 BC], a non-Christian, describing God: "God dwells in the universe as its ruler and governor, and rules the stars in their courses, and the changing seasons, and all the varying sequences of nature, looking down on earth and sea, and protecting the life and goods of men."

And, "The divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature."

I particularly like the easy to read translation in this Penguin Classics edition.

Interesting book! Three public figures and Cicero himself, gather in Cotta's villa around 76 B.C. to discuss the nature of the gods. Gaius Velleius is an Epicurean. Quintus Lucilius Balbus, a Stoic. Gaius Aurelius Cotta, an Academic and pontifex. For a summary of the text see, p. xlvi-xlviii. For a brief review of how this book was received in history, see Introduction, p. ix. The question Cicero raises at the beginning of his work is: "If the gods have neither the power nor the desire to help us, if they have no interest whatever and they pay no attention to our activities, if there is nothing which can percolate from them to affect our human lives, what reason have we for addressing any acts of worship or honors or prayers to the immortal gods?" (p. 4)
Academics promoted questioning of established opinions; Skepticism denied the possibility of attaining ultimate knowledge of things but only high probability and suspension of judgment (åðïêç). Cicero was influenced by Carneades, the founder of the Third Academy (though his principle `voluptas cum honestate' was regarded by Cicero to be too close to Epicureanism) and by Antiochus, founder of the Fifth Academy (very open to Stoicism). Cotta, the Academic philosopher, endorses belief in the gods on the basis of traditional religion and patriotic duty. He criticizes the arguments adduced by Stoics and Epicureans as non-conclusive and faulty in logic. Here are a couple of quotes from him: "I should defend the beliefs about the immortal gods which we have inherited from our ancestors, together with our sacrifices, ceremonies and religious observances. I shall indeed defend them, and I have always done so; no words from any person, whether learned or unlearned, will ever budge me from the views which I inherited from our ancestors concerning the worship of the immortal gods." (p. 109); and: "I have gained better instruction on how to worship the immortal gods, guided by pontifical law and ancestral custom, from those miniature sacrificial bowls, bequeathed to us by Numa and described by Laelius in his little speech which is pure gold, than from the explanations of the Stoics." (p. 122)
On his part, Balbus, as a good Stoic, believed in a world-soul and in providence (ðñüíïéá) governing the world, though not the destiny of individuals. The Stoics' was a very immanentistic world view; they also believed in Fate (çéìáñìÞíç) and in predetermined events. This view of Fate appealed to the Roman passion for future-telling. In Roman society, there were:
1) Augurs = College of 10 and then 15 (from 51 BC) priests: they studied birds' flight patterns
2) Haruspices = Etruscan priests who studied animals' entrails
3) Pontefices = College of 16 priests
4) Diviners = they studied Sybilline books

I think Peter Walshs book The Zen of 3D Game Programming in DirectX 8.0 is the best book written for Direct3D beginners to own for initially starting out in Direct3D. Period. This book, however, isn't in the same league, It feels like something he inherited from somebody else and tried to fix up rather than something he did from scratch.
It does provide some interesting insights into network based game interaction and an interesting chapter on game AI. It also provides some interesting source code relating to a networkable game engine.
However, it covers the same old entry level "this is how 3D stuff works" and "this is how to initialize direct3D" that Non-Advanced books cover as well as numerous other introductory features out of place in an "Advanced" book.
And, unfortunately, when all is said and done, most of the really Advanced material is covered in a less than thorough manner. Many truly important topics in advanced Direct3D like Animated character mesh objects (Skin and Bones) are covered skimpily at best.
Also, at least on my system (1.4ghz 64mb Geforce3), the example codes performance was much less than you would hope for. The main Game engine codes primary example is only usable in a networked client / server environment. Maybe if theyd said Networked Game Programming instead of Advanced it would have been better.
All in all, If you are a Direct3D programmer and especially if you have a genuine interest in client server based games, it is probably worth owning this book for the odd bits you can pick up. Peter still knows a great deal more about D3D than I do and I will no doubt buy any more books that he continues to make.
Frankly though I wish Peter would go back to the style of his previous book and make a Advanced version of it. Perhaps building on the starter Game engine he provided in that maybe adding collision detection, character animation sequencing and actual game construction info.

Instant shipping of great item. Good seller!

After recently purchasing SAMS learn DirectX 7 in 24 hours I was put off programming for a while, it contained a lot of unexplained code, that the reader was expected to remember without understanding.

When I received this book for christmas however I was delighted to find that right from the start every peice of code is explained. The author also explained the advantages of various operating systems and programming langauges, which I found quite usefull. I was also pleased to see that the book not only explained just the direct X programming langauge, but also covered many other aspects of game programming, such as the creating of windows, using the message pump and various other functions in the windows API. The CD which comes with the book also contains some very usefull source code including the Quake 3 engine source code.

To sum things up this is a great book, for programmers who wish to write efficient code and understand what they are actually writing. I would recommend it to Advanced programmers, Intermediate programmers and possibly even ambitious beginners.

Having enjoyed Mr. Walsh's Zen book so much, I purchased this book without thumbing through it first. Big mistake.

Chapter one is a rewrite of information you can get from the help disk included with Visual C++.

Chapter two is a rewrite of parts of the DirectX SDK.

The name of chapter three should have been a signal of the true content. What is a chapter entitled "3-D Math Foundations" doing in a book with "Advanced" in the title? This chapter covers, yet again, basic 3-d math, vectors, matrices, etc. This chapter also contains a rewrite of some of the DirectX SDK. The only thing here worth noting is a minor treatment of Binary Space Partitions.

Chapter 4 is a complete disaster. Beginning with more basic chase algorithms, the author attempts to describe genetic algorithms and neural networks, failing miserably. The description on page 248 is minimal at best, the examples are not really explained at all. A huge misprint occurs on page 252-3.

I cannot comment on chapter 5 as I am not interested in network play. Quite simply, I haven't read it.

Chapter 6 another rewrite of another part of the DirectX SDK.

Chapter 7, the only part of the book which might be called "advanced" never really covers any subject in detail. A lot of this chapter, like a lot of the book is page after page of unexplained code taken directly from the included CD.

Chapter 8 is yet another rewrite of yet another section of the DirectX SDK.

Chapter 9 finally describes how to use the BSP trees which were touched upon back in chapter 4.

There is almost nothing here which would justify the word "advanced" being used in the book's title.

An almost laughable situation which occurs throughout the book is when the author explains that he cannot cover some subject or other in detail due to space limitations. One wonders how much he could have written if 80% of the book wasn't a rewrite of the SDK.

This thoroughly disappointing book is saved only by the fact that it contains very little of Andre LeMoth's gnarly rad surfer dude vernacular.

I really like the style of this Author, as he does not *rewrite* *SDK* helpdocs*. He tries to give you his understanding
of what he sees going on from his experience of coding. I find this very helpful, as he is always turning over lots of things,
and illustrating them so I feel I understand them better.
The title of the book is DirectX 8, so there isn't alot of handholding on constructing the C++ end of the code.
You are warned about this in the intro, and it is true. Wrappers, and alot of *advanced*
coding stuff are used, and It is up to you to puzzle the language of it through.
Also, alot of necessary details regarding changes Microsoft made to Direct3D, which the Author had no choice but to cover.

As a developer with a number of ideas all having to do with 3D applications, I was searching for more info on Java3D. I was not even sure if I should use Java for it. Although being a Dutchman, my business as an independent trainer and developer is in the high-tech German automotive and appliances industry. Training and educating young German engineers in development and manufacturing of new high quality products.

So, there I was, having lots of ideas but no real base to build on. What I had were some plain Java books, of course the Java Tutorial and the Java 3D API Specification. Especialy the latter gives lots of information and is an excellent source of 3D coding, however, it is not an easy guide for a starting programmer. Anyway, you know how it is, if you go into detail, you're coming across many difficulties and problems. It usually takes lots of times to find out where something like your problem is described. And even if you find something similar, it might be in a completely other context, or you have to go through long code lists just to find a part of the solution.

Then, searching the Amazone site, I came along a new book called the Java 3D API Jump Start. I finished it in two main sessions, I believe it were two long evenings all together. The main advantage to me in the first place was that it re-assured me, Java3D was the way to go. It very well describes the history of Java3D, the backgrounds and developments under way, and the outlook in the future. All backed up by many pictures, lots of them in full color.

It is, of course, a book for beginning 3D programmers. So, it brings you quickly up to speed. The way the book deals with the various topics is the following. It describes details you ever wanted to know about, gives some code lines just fot that particular option and refers to the API's or free available examples on the web, for the neighbouring code lines. Just to give you an idea of some of the topics, it descibes very thoroughly things like Geometry Arrays and Utilities. There are, for instance, full code samples of building geometric shapes, using advanced tools like the automatic triangulator and the normal generator. Also it describes very well topics like Indexed and Stripped Geometry Arrays. Some of the highlights of the book to me are the chapters on lighting, transformations and behaviours.

The book refers also to the Jump Start web-site where the interested reader can find example programs together with the source codes. So, the book gives you exactly what it promises, a jump start into Java3D. It not only helps you to build your first 3D programs, but it tells you also how things work and why they should be programmed in their particular way.

Now that I have read the book, do I still have questions? Yes, lots of them. But that's the way it should be. After you have your first shapes moving across your screen, you want more. You like to add all those nice little things you only know about, and of course, these are nowhere described. But now you have at least gained experience and increased your knowledge of Java3D, which makes it easier to find solutions elsewhere. And, hopefully the authors of this book Aaron E. Walsh and Doug Gehringer will make some efforts to write their next one on advanced Java3D programming.

...

I am a 3d programmer for 3 years . I know the difference between directional lights and point lights, textures and mipmaps.

I had read the complete Java3d spec and the tutorial by Sun and was expecting a bit more in this book. Unfortunately it is a big letdown in terms of such expectations.

The book seems to have been written for a fresh programmer who doesnt have any knowledge of 3d concepts. There are also a few technical errors at the end in the PickTool class and OrbitBehavior class descriptions. Also Behavior concepts are not covered very well. If you have read the J3D specs and the tutorial by Dennis Bouvier, then there is no need to buy this book. If you are very fresh to 3d and in particular to Java3d
this book is a good introduction to the key concepts.

After reading the Java 3D API spec and going through Sun's tutorial I was still confused. I've got limited 3D experience. This book went a long way toward explaining and clarifying some of the concepts in Java 3D. The examples are simple and straight-forward and had me up and running writing my own programs in a short-time. My only complaint is that there are some things I wished they had gone more in-depth on, however the book is of an appropriate length, aptly named, reads well, and is a good value.

If your purpose is to become familiar with the basics of Java3D, and read what 3D in Java is all about, then you should buy this book, definately. But don't expect to find complex real-life examples. What you learn is truly just the basics. Intermediate or advanced topics are not covered. Just answers to questions like "how do I setup a 3D environment?", and "how do I create a rotation?" and things like that. If you browse the Java3D API, and see what else is possible, then you realize that it's really just the basics that is covered.

But if the basics are your purpose, this is truly a jump-start, and it will definately suit your expectations.

I have been programming with Java for a few years, but I've only just started to try and do some work with Java3D and this book provided a good introduction to the API. It really is a jump-start - introducing 3D concepts and the practicalities of implementing them in Java 3D without going into very much detail- sometimes a bit more would have been useful, but you could usually find what you needed in the API documentation. In fact, this almost acts as an index to that documentation- telling you that classes exist and how they relate to one another so that you can then look up the details of how to use them.

There is definitely room for a detailed book on Java 3D, which this certainly isn't, but if you are looking for a general introduction you can't go far wrong here.

Since there is no hardcover addition and this is a cheap destined to break paperback I must give it one star.
Please Gemstone and Dark Horse rerelease your titles in hardback. The quality is unacceptable. Please don't buy the product until you see a hardback edition is offered. As for me I"m trying to collect the Gladstone comic books instead. And now I have a real tacky looking magazine holders on my bookcase. Thank-you Gemstone and Dark Horse!

First of all, I did not expect the book to be so small...but then I figured it was made to be the size of an actual comic book page, so I was able to live with that. The contents of the book are excellent, and while I would have appreciated more pages dedicated to discussing the history of the Disney comics, the selections, though random, do provide a nice overall essay of all the different characters that became popular in the comic book format.

With 75 years and probably thousands of stories to choose from, it couldn't have been easy to select the stories that made it into this volume. The folks at Gemstone did an admirable job, though, with a wonderful sampling of rarely reprinted comics from the US and Disney's foreign publishers -- some being reprinted in English for the first time. Most of the legendary Disney comic creators are represented here, from Floyd Gottfredson to William Van Horn to Don Rosa to the immortal Carl Barks. Even Walt Kelly has a short story in this volume.

In addition to a great sampling of creators, this book also has a good sampling of characters. You get the expected stories of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and Goofy, but you also see Lil' Bad Wolf, Brer Rabbit, Bucky Bug, Gremlins, Fethry Duck and Launchpad McQuack taking the helm of their own adventures.

Gemstone has replicated the DVD format, from the cover (including nice art by Don Rosa) to essays by David Gerstein (taking the Leonard Maltin role for the book). The only real weakness to this book is that the stories seem to have been selected solely for their rarity, with no real common theme or thread to hold the book together. Hopefully future volumes in the series will address this issue. As it is, this is a fine sampling, one that any Disney comic fan will enjoy.

Comics were made to sell for 5 or 10 cents, but the modern comic, even full of distracting ads, runs two or three dollars. Gladstone/ Another Rainbow Publishing came up with a great idea. In the '90s they presented Carl Barks' duck comics in graphic novel format, which they called comic albums, for between six and ten dollars.

Absolutely great, what? You bet, until in one of a string of bloomers the proprietary Disney Company snatched back the license and made a botched effort at doing its own comics (this sort of thing was legion at that time and stirred Roy Disney to make a website called Save Disney). Now for the good news: the entire Gladstone run is still available, and some have even been combined into larger albums including two to four of the original oversize full-color comic albums.

"Disney Treasures", of course, refers to the lavishly packaged metal-boxed DVD sets of cartoons and other retro Disney shows. It's a brainstorm to lay this book out in that format and it holds up quite well, since this brief overview samples the American and European comics from the 1930s to the present.

David Gerstein contributes an invaluable two page essay for this book in which the comics are otherwise presented without comment. He alludes, ever so briefly, to the '50s book, Seduction of the Innocents, which started a crusade against comic books on the grounds that they were too violent and graphic in the gory sense. The result of that was the Comics Code, which was on every Gold Key and thus Disney comic. Dell had its own version of the code, and assured parents that "Dell Comics are Good Comics," thus assuring free access for kids.

Gerstein repeats the old saw that until then comics weren't for kids, and that graphic novels have brought back the pre-code days with a vengeance. I merely retort that the very idea of comics in this era fashioned them for youth and that this innocence brought out the best in Disney and other artists and made Gold Key comics the good part of being sick, since you'd inevitably get the latest adventures of the Junior Woodchucks or Mickey VS the Phantom Blot.

When the license went from Dell to Western Publishing the printing quality declined, but Gladstone later lifted it to a level of archival quality with its beautiful volumes. The general view is that in terms of the silver screen cartoon shorts, Donald was a much more interesting protagonist than Mickey, but in the comics, I think fans of Carl Barks' duck comics (translated well to TV in DuckTales) will enjoy discovering Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse.

So what is the relation of Gemstone to Gladstone? Gerstein assures me that it's the same crew. Whatever the reason for the name change, Steve Geppi, a close friend of the late Bruce Hamilton, founder of Gladstone, is now carrying the torch. The many great cartoons now available on DVD make this a new Golden Age for animation, and more good news: Gladstone/ Gemstone are now leading a comics revival.

Plenty of great comics put together with mediocre ones.

Why not more Carl Barks'and Fred Gottfredson's creations ? The more recent titles (with one or two honorable exceptions)are well below Bark's and Godfredson's levels.