Wang Books

I have many "Dummies" books in my technical collection, and am proud to add Visual Basic 5 Programming to it. I read through the reviews for all of the intro to programming books, and felt that this one would be a good place to start. I have just started to teach myself Visual Basic 5.0, and can definitely see the need to keep a book like this in one's collection. The book was laid out in an orderly fashion, the exercises were a breeze to to, and the cartoons will definitely keep me in stitches on days where I will need a laugh or two to get by. Congrats to the authors for writing such a good book!

The book is written as if addressing a group of nursery school children. The level of discussion is below any practicle programming guide and would highly reccomend looking elsewhere for help.

Wally Wang does a tremendous job of presenting Visual Basic material easily understandable to even the most novice programmer( like I am). This is definitly on my shelf as a reference and a fantastic starting point.

Sure this is a beginner's book...but it's fun to read and gives good information. I've been a network engineer and systems admin person for 8 years and a VB developer for just 4 months. I ramped up quickly with this book and moved on to more "advanced" books like Deb Kurata's "Doing Objects" but I still come back to this to read the one-liners and cartoons

This book is awesome! Read this book and then read "Visual Basic 6 From The Ground Up." These two books will teach you everything you need to know about VB programming. This book is easy to read, understand and lets you easily apply your knowledge. VB6 from the ground up is the best book on VB6 but the reason you wouldn't just read it is because sometimes the author has a hard time explaining things but if you combine these two books then you will know exacly what he is talking about. My criticism is that this is only a intro book. It doesn't go deep into VB, it is slightly outdated and it doesn't show the advanced features of the Professional and Enterprise versions of VB like VB from the ground up does. Most beginners don't realize that a lot of books they buy only let you write programs like the authors do. They don't show you how to create your own. That's why these two books are so good. The clown from New York is crazy. I wish this was the worst book that I've ever read on computers, if that was true then I would have some pretty awesome books! He may THINK he is smart but for the average Joe, this book is great if you've never opened a VB book before. The only thing is that you can't be a complete moron. If you are then get a Windoz book quick before you even try to learn to program. Trust me, I have over a dozen books that I have read on VB. They all tell me the same thing that's in this book except they are twice as thick, and a million times harder to understand. These two books are the only books I have that don't make you "mimic" the author. They let you use what they teach you to decide for yourself which features to add. Email bomb me, or give my email to all kinds of places if I am wrong. You can write me specific questions if you want. I don't care, just be sure not to waste your money on any other books on VB.

Some of the other reviewers have been awfully hard on Ron Walters for "skimming over" the info in this book. We're talking about a book that covers 45 years and hundreds or thousands of people (if you count all the utopians) in a little over 200 pages. I really liked this book as an introduction to the period and the people. It has led to my reading additional books about things like Brook Farm and the relationships between antebellum feminists and abolitionists. If you want fine detail and scrutany, look for something that is less scattershot, maybe "American Reformers: July 16, 1854."

In my mind, this is an introductory text, albeit a fine one. Walters is very accessable, he tries to include necessary historical perspective and whatever cultural information he deems to be valuable to the story he's telling in each chapter. And while each chapter is a story of a different movement or people, he also demonstrates those things these groups have in common. I won't spoil it for you, but at the least of it, they were all idealists who thought to affect the world around them.

While American Reformers gives a fair overview of significant individuals and their movements in U.S. history, the book glosses over much material. Walters has accumulated much data, but it comes across as if he's heading a p.r. campaign for reformers instead of digging deep into his area. Much of Walter's writing is very light here and elsewhere (especially in his monthly columns he writes under the name of "Guido Veloce" for the Johns Hopkins Magazine) and at times it appears frivilous.

American Reformers is a wonderful resource book. Walters has done a beautiful job blending information with anecdotes. A great book for anyone interested in reform movements of the 19th Century, and their infuence on contemporary society.

With American Reformers, Walters has composed a fine synthesis of secondary literature on the varied antebellum reform movements. In doing so, he argues that the reform impulse emerges out of evangelical Protestantism but by the Civil War takes a more secular turn more involved in legislating social controls than converting the hearts of individuals. As he develops this argument he addresses the different forms that this reform impulse took and organizes the book thematically. He discusses in successive chapters utopian movements and secular communitarians, abolition, the women's movement and the peace movement, temperance, health reform and spiritualism, working man's reform, and institutional reform, into which he groups mental hospitals, prisons and schools.

Walters demonstrates the secularization of reform in the realm of communitarian societies. Thus, the early nineteenth century utopian settlements that often emerged out of pietistic impulses gave way to more secular experiments in social engineering such as Owenism, or as in the case of Oneida, how a once religious community endured only as a commercial venture. Similarly he shows institutions such as asylums wove their religious inspiration with the science of the times but like prisons and almshouses became holding pens for outcasts rather than places for healing and reform.

Walters also situates the emergence of reform in the particular circumstances of antebellum America. He argues that the emergence of the middle class created made it possible for people to devote time to reform, and that technological advances in printing made it possible for people to actually make a living as an "agitator." He also argues that reform helped shape the identity of the emerging middle class. This point come through particularly clearly in his chapter on working man's reform.

Walters' synthesis suffers from its grand scope and short length. In it he sacrifices a certain amount of detail and analysis for space and clarity. The section on utopian movements, for example, traces the personalities of the major reformers and a brief outline of the community that followed without in-depth analysis. Throughout the book quotations from primary sources would have been helpful in giving a feel for the particular movement under discussion. The lack of primary source material allows Walters to sacrifice documentation, and the reader sometimes wishes for some assistance in discerning the origin or fuller development of a particular point. To his credit, Walters provides a good bibliographical essay at the end, but the lack of documentation sometimes proves frustrating and thus interrupts the otherwise smooth flow in the text. Nonetheless, American Reformers is a very readable and useful synthesis of the secondary sources on antebellum reform. As such, it is a helpful and welcome addition to the field.

i used it for many years. In my opinion, it is a good tarot deck. I use it to dissolve many problems of my clients, so i grant it a 4-star praise. the only fault is that its package is too simple.
my web is: hunterliu.com, :)

I cant testify as to the accuracy of the cards' symbolism (I havent gotten the appropriate books yet), but what I've seen gave me some insights.

The main problem I see with the deck is it's art, which, IMHO, is mediocre and to which I cant connect. It's a far cry from the art of Crowley's deck, and isnt as good as the art of Waite's "cartoonish" deck.

I have found the simple artwork of this deck to be excellent for meditation and visulization exercises. There are certainly flashier decks around. There are certainly decks around that are more beautiful. However, I find this deck to be a highly useful tool. When I first got the deck to use with Kraig's _Modern Magic_, I admit that I didn't like it very much. Over time, the deck has grown on me. Robert Wang's book which explains the deck gives a clear introduction to the philosophy behind the deck.

This deck has too many errors to be regarded as a good copy of an original working GD tarot deck. Just check for yourself in Regardies tarot descriptions found in his volume "The Golden Dawn". Having said that it's still the closest one to a real GD deck that's available on the public market and is quite workable.

My one big complaint with this book is that it combines traditional and simplified characters. The "grammar notes" (which are just footnotes) and index are written in traditional characters, while the homework is written in simplified characters. There should be two completely different editions of this book: one for simplified, and one for traditional.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer living in China, I needed a book that would quickly and effectively introduce me to the complex grammatical structures and vocabulary necessary to engage in grown-up conversation. Books widely available here in the motherland were not particularly useful - most "advanced" books here tend to avoid the very issues that are most talked about by young, educated people today.

I found "Oh, China" to be a great tool in my personal language acquisition process (a sentence that I can now translate into Chinese...). Most importantly, the book introduces topics of conversation that I often encounter in a method that is all-but-entirely free of bias. I was able to use this book with my Chinese tutor...

While it's true that the grammar isn't perfect - sometimes my friends and teachers laugh @ me for sounding like a textbook - for the most part the grammar lessons were right on, especially their explanations in good, clear English.

The vocabulary problems stated above are, indeed, quite infuriating.

Despite these problems, the book was immensely helpful to me and, overall, a really good book

Unfortunately I can't agree with the first reviewer. The concept behind this book is sound; it attempts to address the needs of students who, due to family background or special circumstances (such as, in my case, having lived in China), can speak some Chinese but have little knowledge of reading, writing and formal grammar. The concept is good, but the book falls short on execution. Problems:

1)There are numerous errors and omissions in the text and in the example sentence patterns. My Chinese teacher, a native speaker of northern standard Mandarin, has confirmed this.

2)The grammar "notes" are little more than footnotes; no formal presentation of grammar is given. One would think that students whose background includes little grammar preparation would require more grammar than a typical textbook provides, but this book contains virtually no formal grammar presentation at all.

3)The sentence patterns are not only prone to error but also frequently contain vocabulary items that have yet to be presented in the main body of the text. Considering that the target audience is students who can speak some Chinese but cannot read and write, why do the authors assume that students using the book will be able to read the characters for these additional vocabulary items before they have been formally presented in the main body of the text?

4)The exercises also frequently contain vocabulary, grammar and/or characters that have not been introduced in the text. This makes doing the exercises incredibly frustrating.

5)Although the main text is presented in both "traditional" ("fantizi") and simplified ("jiantizi") Chinese characters, the exercises are given only in jiantizi, while the sentence patterns (containing characters not found in the main text) and index are given only in fantizi. This makes the book significantly less useful for those who wish to learn only one character set.

6)The organization of the index is a travesty.

In sum, this book needs a much better editing job and more comprehensive use of both fantizi and jiantizi character sets throughout. Perhaps these problems will be addressed in a second edition. Until then, prospective students who fall into this book's target audience group are better off combining one of the many elementary texts on reading and writing Chinese characters with a more advanced book on Chinese grammar, such as Yip and Rimmington's (jiantizi-only) "Intermediate Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook".

The title indicates that this is for advanced beginners. I don't consider myself an advanced beginner, but this book was very informative and helpful to me. I really appreciated the wide range of information presented with each lesson, and I learned a lot by just going through the lesson once. Although some of the grammar explanations are a little dry, it is a very helpful reference to have if you are learning Mandarin.

I found this is a truly useful book for practical IC designers like myself.

I found this book a nice complement to existing literature such as "Basic ESD and I/O Design." The complementary characterisitc of this book arises from addressing the issue of designing ESD structures from the standpoint of an IC designer, with plenty of actual circuit examples (although mostly digital).

The only criticism is that the book is poorly written, too colloquial, with many grammatical misconstructions.

This is a bad book with many mistakes (not just spelling mistakes but design and interpretation mistakes!!). The author do not have seems to have hands-on experience in ESD and not known in ESD area, which is clear from his approach. Do not waste the money..
If you are a designer, go and buy the book by Maloney and Dabral.
If you are a device engineer, buy the book by Duvvury and Amerasekera.

Having owned this book for several weeks, now I could make some comments here. Well, if you need some books on ESD or IO design, you won't be able to find many. This book is one of several good books with comprehensive coverage on ESD protection. It addresses ESD test models, protection circuit design techniques, failure analysis, layout and simulations.

However, my personal feeling is that this book came from lots of author's paper collections instead of his own experience. Especially, in Chapter 6 (ESD Failure Analysis and Modeling), virtually all examples were borrowed from others, and the reproduced FA images are poor. Also, I agree ... that the book was not well written. It has too many long sentences which make you read uneasily.

Looking for a better one? Wiley just published the second edition of "ESD in Silicon Integrated Circuits" which is far better than first edition, and it's more practical and much cheaper than this book, with super quality. Maybe I can give a brief comparison between these two books here, academic vs. industry, professors vs. engineers.

I guess I am rushing to judgement - but in the first 10 pages I read, there were about 8 typos - so I am giving this a 2 stars for now. Will update my review/rating as I go along.

This book does not do a good job of getting the small experiments running. And w/o that, it is difficult to get any handle over the big picture. If you haven't done XML and Oracle integration before, this book definitely is not what you are looking for.

This book covers everything on how to develop XML applications based on the Oracle XML infrastructure. It also provides the readers with a lot of samples on how to utilize the technology. No matter you are an advanced professional or a fresh graduate, if you are interested in XML-related Oracle application development, personally I think this is a must-have book.

I wish more books were written like this. When you read it you understand that a team of high professional people have worked on it. The book is organized to be useful for developers, DBAs, managers. You'll find here everything you need: XML & SQL, XSQL , XSLT, XML in PL/SQL, Java, C, C++. I highly recommend this book.

This is an excellent book if your are new to database marketing (or have a staff member new to database marketing). It is very easy to read and and explains database marketing in the simplist terms.

It is not a book for the advanced database marketer, nor does it cover advanced strategies. Paul Wang is very knowledgeable and I have seen several of his (and Arthur Hughes) presentations through the DMA.

If your job requires database marketing and you need to find ways to do it better, this book is not for you. This book appears to have been written more for the marketing manager who has database marketers reporting to him or her, but who has no direct involvement in the process. This book is just a basic overview of what database marketing is, with no practical use.
Even the examples appear contrived and not actual case studies.

Incidentally, years after purchasing this book, I took a database marketing course in my MBA program that was taught by the wife of one of the authors. Like the book, the course didn't offer much either. I ended up scrapping the book -- not passing it on, but tossing it -- shortly after that.

Jackson and Wang have developed a "Bible" for implementing database marketing. The book helps marketers implement a customer management program at any level of application by applying 3 basic building blocks of skills. Best book i've read on the topic !

This book doesn't have a lot of real world business cases, a little bit boring. On the other hand, it doesn't have much theoretical depth either. As a practioner, I didn't find much useful info. inside.

I read this book in 1995 when VB3 was first released. It got me started programming within a few days. It is quick, concise, nontechnical, and humorous. I would suggest this book to anyone with NO PREVIOUS knowledge of Visual Basic 3. I am working with VB5 today and I find this book to still be a wonderful reference.

This book is great(if you have no experence) it teaches VB3 like no other! It has references, some great code, & teaches key code.

I bought this to learn Visual Basic 3. Even though there are some good points to the book, overall it is total useless for the money. There are not any explanations as to what the wording of the code means. The book brings you to a certain point in programing and drops you flat and starts another subject. I will not buy another book in of this series of books.

I read this book in 1995 when VB3 was first released. It got me started programming within a few days. It has quick, concise, nontechnical, and humorous. I would suggest this book to anyone with very knowledge of Visual Basic 3. I am working with VB5 today and I find this book to still be a wonderful reference.

Around the Year by Tasha Tudor is a splendid peek into the simply wholesome traditions of a New England farm family throughout the year. Tudor's pictures are darling. My children love it. I'd recomend this book to anyone with children, anyone who needs to teach children about the monthes and seasons of the year, or anyone who just loves a really good poetic picture book. Enjoy! We did.

Around The Year was originally published in 1957, and is generally regarded as one of the author/illustrator's finest endeavors in picture-book form. Tudor has penned appropriate short verses to accompany four pages of delicately-detailed scenes for each month, two done in watercolor and two in pencil.

Miss Tudor is famous for her sensitive and accurate depictions of rural scenes of the past. I consider this book to be the pinnacle of her successful efforts in bringing the loveliness of by-gone days to the present-day young reader. Commonplace events such as running home during a springtime shower and ice-skating on a pond are given as much attention by the artist as are holiday-times and other special moments. Tudor's portrayal of children carving jack-o'lanterns for Halloween and the setting-off of firecrackers on America's Independence Day are quite memorable.

On each page, there is much to be shared between any adult and child reading the book together. The Thanksgiving scenes are particularly evocative (and timely) for the start of meaningful discussions between parents and children. Tudor's observant eye gathers the flora and fauna of New England and delivers them to the observer in a delightful, but natural manner. Throughout the pages, there is a charming lightheartedness and gentleness rare in today's children's books. The careful reader will also find moments of unexpected humor. I highly recommend this book for both its content and delivery to readers of all ages.

That said, I am livid with the publisher's decision to replace what I consider Tudor's finest dust-jacket design with a repeat of an image from the month of April--even though it's arguably the finest single composition presented in the book. The original painting of 12 miniature portraits featuring monthly activities (in a clockface pattern) coupled with a seasonal bird portrait in each corner is a tour-de-force in composition. It hints at the precious jewels to be found inside the book's covers, yet stands alone as a memorable work in itself.

To make matters worse, the original title-page featuring another twelve individual bird portraits each surrounded by Tudor's distinctive twig frames has also been discarded. The new reader is also denied the enjoyment provided by Tudor's clever embellishments of the book's title, including an inchworm wending its way along the top of a letter.

There is an unfortunate lack of faithfulness to both the clarity of line and intensity of color that were so notable in the book's early printings; this happens all too often in the modern world of children's-book publishing. Hopefully, the printer and the publisher will work together to rectify these failings for subsequent printings.

Even with these faults, this book is a visual feast for both those who already do, and those who will now learn to, appreciate the value and importance of America's past rural life. Moreover, it is an enduring testimony of Tasha Tudor's distinguished contributions to the world of children's literature .

i could not find any magic in this book. the style is the same but the pictures and colors are just not magical. i hope it is the printers fault. i was also not happy with the amount of information in book. prehaps you should describe these books better. this is the 5th. tasha tudor that i have bought from you and the first i have not liked.

I read this book after Amazon suggested it to me, and because it could be had for cheap. Amazon suggested I might like this book because I had recently purchased Leo Marx's "The Machine in the Garden" and Henry Nash Smith's "Virgin Land". I had to read no further then the author's preface to see reference to those two authors, and the book often cited to their work in those two books.

Undoubtably, Chapter Two, called "The Factory as Republican Community" is a must-read. Using Goffman's concept of the "Total Insitituion", Kasson uses primary and secondary source material to discuss how the establishment of the Lowell-model factories in New England represented the culmination of a certain kind of american ideology. Kasson situates the discussion in terms of American reaction to English factory life (see Dickens, Hard Times) and how American factory owners wanted their factories to be "different".

For me, the most illuminating part of this book came when Kasson explained how the reaction to English factory life was primarily shock and horror at the lack of social control exercised by the British over their factory workers. The Lowell owners were just as concerned with the social control of their workers as they were with making economic profit (Kasson points out that their was a substantial issue as to whether the factories would, in fact, be profitable). For me, the point was to illustrate the profoundly undemocratic roots of American Republicanism. Although Kasson is far from an ideologue, I can see why this chapter is often required reading in college history courses.

As for the rest of the book. Meh. Chapter one sets up the background for Chapter two, so you have to read that. I thought his chapter on Emerson ("Technology and Imaginative Freedom") was a bit derivative of his influences. His chapter on "The Aesthetics of Machinery" is mildly interesting (Did you know that Americans used to paint their machines with flowers?). His final chapter on "Technology and Utopia" is, in my opinion, the weakest, although I was engaged by his exegesis of Twain's "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".

I'd recommend this book for students of early america history, american studies types and people interested in the the subject of social control.

We used this book as one of our texts in a history of technology course. I thought that Kasson did an excellent job covering such a large amount of material in a relatively short book.

Though it was a little dry (I would never have picked it up on my own) I thought it served as an excellent piece on early American history from a tachnological perspective.

In "Civilizing the Machine", Kasson presents a very fair and even set of accounts which chronicles the advent of the American industrial and technological communities. While this is not your standard economics or history book, Kasson sets the tone for the burgeoning young nation's entrance onto the world trade stage. His insights over the "hidden agenda" of many early national leaders are quite fascinating; in this regard, he slyly points out that many of our forefathers who were so deftly incline to advocate liberties and freedom for the masses were also deeply concerned over the relatively slight amount of intelligence among the working classes. The book is not without its faults. The decision to not include any narratives about the economic and industrial effects from the Civil War was a troubling omission for this reader. Kassan's treatment of America's infantile arts and education communities might lose some readers. His goal, which takes a while to digest, is to point out that most of the early arts docents from the industrial powerhouses were simply trying to encourage the common workers to realize that their contributions to the "American machine" were actually assisting in the development of a sense of American culture. In that this book takes the reader down the venues of early Revolutionary War era factories, controversial immigration policies in the last half of the nineteenth century, and the mindset behind the first free, public American schools, it is a highly recommended work for fans of history, education in American and the Industrial Revolution.