Wang Books

This book is exactly what the title implies. If you find yourself having little difficulty describing a computer term, then you can turn to this reference. Everything is in alphabetical order and comes with simple illustrations. Before the alphabet that are medic characters any of these are described.

Due to the accelerating advances in technology many terms are not in this edition.

When I purchased this book I was looking for a dictionary full of words that a novice would not understand reguarding computers. Instead I ended up with a book with limited definitions and silly jokes ! If I had time I would have returned it ! Half the definitions I look up arent even in the book. Save your money and buy a better dictionary.

Minotaur by Joseph MacGillivray

This book presents itself as a readable biography of one the great Archaeologists, Sir Arthur Evans, instead of a thoughtful biography the book is really a prolonged attack on Evans (and 19th century archaeology) by an author of dubious credentials and makes for extremely painful reading.

The book is tolerable journalism when its sticks to the factual events, but it is so filled with hostility towards Evans, that the reader is quickly bogged down in a long winded and poorly researched series of ad hominen attacks and innuendo of wrong doing that the thrill of Crete and Minos is completely buried.

The central claim of this bad book is that Evans created Minoan archaeology and did not discover anything. The attacks are unrelenting. The author claims variously : Evans is unscientific and concerned only with objects, stole antquities, horded valuable linear B scripts, was a repressed homosexual, took too much credit for his finds and harmed nearly all of his colleagues, was shrewd and calculating to excess in his business dealings, was a racist because his disliked Turks and personally favored European and Greek religion and culture, was a spoiled wealthly aristocrat of no ability but gifted merely by birth and social standing- who also ate very well, etc etc etc

That the author has issues with Evans is an understatement and parrying all of his attacks (most of which are the authors own unsubstantiated suspicions or irelevant details) is a waste of time.

Evans- the gentlemen and scholar who devoted his 90 years of life to classics, beauty in art and history, who spent his fortune to dig Knossos and who developed new theories of myth and civilization: in short a person whose name will be recalled as long as history-minded Western man is revered- is not present in this book. This book is the product of a modern academic archaeology resentful of its romantic past, that prefers digging with toothbrushes, hates coin collectors, believes antiquities dealers are evil and wishes that British, Germans and French had left everything in the ground for them to sniff about with white gloves and a microscope.


That the author is an academic feather-weight is evident in the opening pages, where he attempts to work out his own crude thesis: Evans was not an archaeologist but a myth maker motivated by sexual demons. His analysis is so bad, reading his turns of phrase are like chewing on sand: "Archaeologists are the progenitors as well as the midwives at the birthing process we call excavation." Ugly writing quickly leads to bad analysis such as this delphic prose: " ...we must start with Evans himself, the product of his genes and his life experiences." These experiences include the alleged homosexuality of Evans which the author tries to awkwardly weave into his book perhaps hoping to increase sales, but he cannot find much and we are left with a few sentences of inane writing worthy only of a freshman trying to impress a bored teaching assistant. He writes that he suspects Evans was driven to pursue his career because of the "repressed 'beastliness' of his homosexuality..." His efforts degenerate further a few hundred pages later with innuendo about a young man Evans adopted and his association with Baden Powell and the Boy Scout movement.

The author has no wit and his style wears the reader down. He makes no effort in the biography to educate the reader about the civilization of Crete and takes the excitement of the past away completely. I know of no other book on archaeology that deadens its subject matter to such a degree. The author is all over the place with his own insipid thoughts and at times contradicts his own thin analysis.

For example the author continually harps on the fact that Evan's sister titled her biography of him, "Time and Chance". The author writes "Nothing could be further from what I believe about how Evans discovered Knossos..."(p.6) In his effort to bring Evans down from his perch the author continually paints Evans as simply a digger with money. At the end of his book, the author returns to this theme: "Arthur Evans did not stumble upon Knossos by some happy circumstance. He set his mind on acquiring the rights to a well-documented site.... he secured the expertise he lacked in the person of a site foreman, architects, and conservators..." (p.308) Ok this attack may work in hindsight, but on page 175 the author himself writes: "they all faced the risk that within a few hours they might have removed only a thin layer of eroded soil and exposed a solid rock outcropping scattered with worthless pot shards... Evans might learn that he had chased off the other suitors only to find the bride barren of promise and her dowry worthless. These are the risks excavators take." Which is it? Did Evans simply walk in and dig up what everyone knew was there or did chance play a role and did he finally locate the fabled city of Knossos after three and a half millenium? Clearly this writer is a moron.

A good graduate student should set things right and demolish MacGillivray's shoddy research on Evans, a student of history with a sense of the classical- not one inspired while waiting to use public tennis courts in Manhattan as MacGillivray says he was. Surely some inspiration can still be found in the stones of ruined cities, a brilliant gemstone or winds of the Mediterranean.

The author, in writing this extended effort to libel the dead, succeeds only in diminishing our native appreciation of history, and our myths. That is the end point of modernity.

Sandy MacGillivray's in depth analysis of the life and times of pioneer Cretan archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans was a pure joy to read. The author's own experiences as a professional in the field on Crete add great weight to his arguments as he finds himself coping the Evans' legacy on a daily basis. I really got the sense that the author knew Evans, both the man and the scholar, through close attention to and extensive research on the amply available primary sources. This is a wonderfully scholarly, yet very readable and highly interesting book to both the professional archaeologist and interested armchair amateur.

My son uses this in his Chinese school. The books introduce and review vocabulary and new Chinese characters in a logical format. Each page in a book repeats the same basic sentence structure so a child can practice new vocabulary and learn how to use it in context. The CD and pinyin in the books helps pronunciation. We use these every night during story time and our son has made steady progress.

This box is really too expensive, it's only some books and a CD. Everything feels outdated and e.g. a DVD with animations would be more useful than an audio CD.

Sometimes a book comes along that helps you view the world around you with new eyes, and this is just such a book. Barber discusses the third, generally neglected, pillar of modern society; after government and the market comes the "civil society" in which we create our identities and find our deepest fulfillment. The entire book is fascinating, and the last chapter is downright visionary, wherein Barber discusses how "the end of work" may turn out to be humanity's greatest tragedy--or greatest boon.

If you care about the future of society or the future of democracy--and the two are entirely coincident, you need to read this book.

A critical reader will notice that while Barber offers many warm, fuzzy sounding ideas, nearly all of them are rife with logical and practical inconsistencies which render them just that: warm fuzzy statements that are utterly lacking in substance. Beginning with a caricature of the libertarian model of civil society, Barber proceeds to set up a strawman position against which he will argue. The critical flaw in a civil society based on willing voluntary participation, in Barber's view, is that freedom cannot be tolerated because they will become "solitary greedy shoppers" (an attack against materialism, but a misplaced one) A civil society based on free markets and voluntary cooperation does not allow people to interact with one another. (a blatant mischaracterization at best, as people regularly form associations even in pure laissez-faire systems, a fact conveniently ignored) Yet these same people who are isolated materialistic consumers when left to their own devices will suddenly become actively engaged citizens if taxed more and are granted claims on private property.

Corporations are another target of Barber's, as they are the bane of democracy as we know it. Advertising creates demand in such a coercive manner that the market does not guide production, but the opposite. It seems odd to argue that people are so easily manipulated by mildly amusing talking chihuahuas, for example, are capable of having a meaningful discussion over technical matter of public policy. But further reading of Barber's piece will explain why the technicality of issues is really the problem. The aim of the policy development process is not so much to find solutions, but just to have discussions, therefor the issues should be broken down so that everyone can participate. While that may warm the heart, it won't get much done.
There are a number of other problematic claims that Barber makes. One of the most troubling is the call for "civic space," which is neither private nor government, yet the government will control it. To me, this sounds suspiciously like "government space," though claims it is not. The list goes on. To the prospective reader of this I can only offer a warning: you won't get the time spent reading this nonsense back, and probably not the money either.

Great book. Coles' ideas are built upon a review of the relevant and most popular research in reading conducted in the past 50 years. Coles is fair. He cites the research, explains it, and summarizes the conclusion the researcher made. Then he says, there are other ways to interpret these findings, and explains the research from another point of view. Throughout the book I felt that Coles was talking about reading in a balanced, informed, and very insightful way.

Cole's answer to illiteracy is more money, more teachers, smaller classes, better food, happy families, and some more money, etc. His attempt to change the focus of the "reading wars" to a "war on poverty" is another way of saying, "Teacher's aren't responsible for student learning." Cole continues to perpetuate many "reading myths," confusing teachers and the public who really want to put an end to illiteracy. Thank heavens for money back guarantees.

In SENTIMENTAL DEMOCRACY, Burstein periodizes and knits together the diverse strands of the sentimental and mythical rhetoric of the revolutionary generation and two post-revolutionary generations immediately following. He shows how Americans adopted and modified the language of sensibility of the Sternean sentimental novel, the Protestant rhetoric of individual responsibility, and the Lockean language of personal freedom as a way to justify the break with England, what later came to be the quasi-mystical core of what has sometimes been called the "American Creed."

He works hard to note shifts and modifications in the discourse according to internal and external threats. For example, he examines the beginning of "paranoid" era that began as factionalism crept into Washington's cabinet as Jefferson and Hamilton attempted to advance their very different views of the future of America. He notes the beginning of "manifest destiny" in the "Era of Good Feeling" which reflected the flexing of American muscle upon "winning" the War of 1812 He finishes up by taking us up through the Jacksonian era, where the discourse changed yet again as more citizens (men) were enfranchised, and discourse of the common man destroyed the elite Federalist appeals to aristocratic honor forever.

The American discourse initially partook of the notion of "sensibility" from Sterne, later from Crevouceur, modern "men of feeling" who displayed manly virtue balanced with warm-hearted sympathy and generosity. (Think of a perfect Jane Austen hero). To illustrate how the "man of feeling" was used by American patriots to articulate their rights to protest the abusive behavior of King George Burstein notes contemporary sources which articulated not just the language of the rights of Englishmen, but also the sentimental language of proper behavior, and manly fellow feeling. Burstein relates this evolving discourse through a lot of primary sources, including private letters, pamphlets, and key texts of the time such as writings by John Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin's Franklin and Rush.

Ultimately, the wide-ranging source material tends to sabotage the larger narrative about the changes in this discourse. It requires the maximum attention of the reader to recall how any given editorial or letter or historical document is being used to illustrate a certain period in the development and evolution of this language of feeling. Within a single paragraph, we may hear from Daniel Webster, a minor senator, a pastor and an editorialist. Too, sometimes the changes in rhetoric seem so small as to be very little different from the period immediately before or after. So while the overall point Burstein makes about how this romantic discourse served to engage the emotions, passions and the support of Americans against their colonial masters, and how later the populists like Jefferson and Jackson and their cohorts used a variation on this language when they scuttled Adams' presidency, and later the revitalized Whig/Federalists, the sheer number of sources and relatively small shifts in discourse sometimes induces frustration. Still it is a worthwhile and clearly important work that does fill a need in the history of the period. Interestingly, in many ways it is similar to AFFAIRS OF HONOR, both in terms of its thesis and density.

Two tidbits that I found particularly interesting in SENTIMENTAL DEMOCRACY: the persistence of the idea of the journey into the frontier of America as the journey into the 'realm of revelation,' (as dubbed recently by Furtwangler, the historian) a kind of sub-genre of the America as the Earthly Paradise genre. This is the sub-genre Lewis of Lewis & Clark used when he wrote up his notes as epiphanies, describing natural landmarks in mythic, epic language. Burstein is also good on the uses of the language of liberty and how is served as a screen (and still does) for imperial adventure. In speaking about the discourse of the frontier, Burstein's writes: "'...the rhetoric of happiness and liberty masked the assertion of raw, expansive power and the neglect of non-citizens' (Indian's) natural rights and moral welfare."

Further, he notes how this discourse served to create of the Indians, untrustworthy, inexplicable others: 'There was no safe place in republican America for a society [Indian society] that was not actively inventing the future...' This seems an apt commentary now, too. We hear it now most baldly in the hegemonic discourse of global business. To wit, an example heard every morning on National Public Radio, immediately following the business news, a show sponsored by General Electric: "At GE we believe knowing about the global economy is everybody's business." Prior to that, I recall they were bringing good things to life, another phrase that would fit very well into the 19th century rhetoric about the "taming" of the West and the "cultivation" of the frontier.

Andrew Burstein's book reveals an obscure but important thread in U.S. cultural history. His discussion of the "Man of Feeling" and the culture of sensibility provides important background for understanding the American Revolutionary period. Since documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States often are read out of context (if they are read at all), Burstein helps you understand what they meant to their contemporaries. Burstein is almost too thorough in surveying 18th and 19th century literature for examples, and the book is slow going at times. But he also tries to show how these ideas persist in America's self-image. His contemporary analysis is skimpy, though - such as his attempt to explain Hollywood screenwriting conventions in terms of sentimental democracy. However, we [...] recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand some of the subtleties behind the events of early American history.

The first edition of this book was published in 1994 but 'Techno Vision II' has been fully updated to incorporate the revolution impact of the Internet. The basic hypothesis of the book is the problem of disconnect. In most organisations, there is a fundamental disconnect between 'techies' and the rest of corporate management - a mismatch that is caused by disparities in training and temperament. Disconnect is so ingrained that few recognize it, despite it being one of most profound limitations to achieving improvements in productivity and competitiveness. The book examines in considerable detail the causes of disconnect and possible solutions. Bridging the gap between 'techies' and the rest of the corporate hiearchy is critical to the future of many organisations.

Wang tells of how CIOs and CEOs suffer from a communication disconnect, and ways to connect. He also introduces the reader to several current IT topics. I found parts of the book a thinly-veiled marketing tool for Computer Associates, the author's company. He also mis-formats URLs.

This book is very good, our son really enjoys the pictures and the touch and feel pages. I would recommend it for any small child.

Although this book has nice illustrations, it does not seem to send a good message to toddlers.

For example, one page shows a picture of a girl with vegetables on her plate at dinner, and a big frown on her face. Lift the page to see her smiling in a world of candy. Currently my toggler enjoys eating vegetables, so I don't see why I should be teaching her that vegetables equal a frowny face.

Similarly the book says that baths are no fun. My toddler loves baths. Why should I be teaching her that baths are no fun?

fuseproject and Yves Behar are showing the future of industrial design. fuseroject's profound and generous ideas come accross in this book: from the early concept sketches, to the computer renderings and the final products.

can't wait for their next book and projects.

Some crappy sketches, computer renderings, brief product descriptions and wire-frame images next to pictures of the actual products (as if this gives any insight into how the design was developed). This book is lacking in content and substance, don't waste your money.

Upon receiving this book, I feel a little disappointed. I admit it is a first sight impression, but apparently the book provide litlle more than basic principles and ecuations. At this price, I spected something more. I do not mean is a bad book but, be warned, surely you can get the same information from a cheaper source.