Tracks Books

If you are a runner, adventure racer, ultrarunner, or interested in extreme events, Extreme Running is for you. I love this book. Extreme Running features sections on races on the seven continents. Twenty-four events are profiled in the chapters. Each event is shown with plenty of photos, race information, distance, time of year, field size, ascent and decent data, contact and Web information, and maps or an altitude profile. As you read the chapters, you get a feel for the event and its difficulty. The Marathon des Sables is featured in 16 pages, Badwater in 10, while others are covered in several pages. The photos are fantastic - making you feel in the race. While not inclusive of all extreme events on the seven continents, the book does a great job of showing you popular events and enough information to help you decide if you could do any one of them. This is a book that some might call a "coffee table" book - it is that beautiful. It appeals to me because I love the draw and challenge of these extreme events. As the author of Fixing Your Feet, I patch the feet of these athletes, and have been to several of them and can attest to the descriptions as accurate.

Twelve-year-old Jerri McKane is distraught to hear her roommate and several other girls from Landmark School for Girls are missing after they didn't return from a school field trip. What is more startling is the purple and yellow school van was spotted traveling along a two-lane road bordering a lake, but was not seen coming out the other end. What happened to the bus? Did it careen on black ice or was there foul play?

Amateur sleuth Jerri McKane will stop at nothing to find out what happened to the bus, even if it means risking her own life.

I was riveted to the edge of my seat wondering what happened to that bus. The author's carefully laid red herring left me totally clueless. I couldn't figure out what happened and I didn't know who to trust. The characterization of the cantankerous head mistress, the overzealous T.V. reporter, and the blue-haired, nose-ringed news camera woman made the story come to life.

Advanced readers too young to handle the likely reasons the children disappeared: possible accidental death, possible child abduction, and possible murder should not read this story just yet. I wouldn't want the little ones to suffer from bad dreams.

But middle school-aged children through adults will enjoy Fading Tracks as Jerri learns to "trust God when the world doesn't seem to make sense."

Jenkins uses excellent case studies to communicate information vital to both CPAs and non-filers. A must-read for anyone dealing with the IRS or any overdue tax situation!

This is a must have information book for any serious NASCAR fan. The text is easy to follow and it also features numerous photos and interesting details on dozens of tracks...

I was lucky enough to be given a copy of this book after a learning experience that I wouldn't really wish on anyone....

Reading this book I experienced a lot of those awful blood chilling moments that often occur when the penny drops; well at least that's how I react to these moments of self realisation.

Needless to say this book has enabled me to put my experience behind me and build on it; whilst recognising the mistakes I made, and being that little bit smarter to avoid the same beartraps.

Anyway, as not all of us can afford our own career coach to guide us through the minefield that is the modern working environment I would strongly recommend this book as an essential read.

Anyone who has ambitions to follow a career path where they are in control could not wish to find a better guide.

This multimedia CD-ROM is full of useful information, video examples, extensive narration, and how-to's captured right from live iSeries workstation sessions.

This was my first experience making a product like this, and I really enjoyed the process under the guidance of the now-defunct Midrange Computing Magazine staff.

If you are new to the iSeries or AS/400, this is a perfect way to start. If you have basic knowledge of operations, but want a better understanding of how the system works, this is also a great resource. It will also benefit managers, programmers, and power users seeking a better understanding of the system. I have worked on the platfrom since 1988 in operations, application development, security, system administration, and performance, so the material in this course is -exactly- what an operator needs to know in real life.

Give it a try - I think you'll find it a very useful tool.

-Gary Patterson, Author

The book recounts the "adventure" of the construction of the railway link from Central London to Heathrow Airport (the Heathrow Express). The construction suffered a very embarrassing tunnel collapse and this book charts the "journey" from just after the collapse of the railway tunnel to the opening of the rail link itself. The journey looks at things from the "people issues" perspective and does so very effectively.

I am a novice when it comes to HR matters and project management, so decided to read the book twice to ensure I had picked up all the useful tips. That may be because I needed to get my little brain around some of the terminology. I am not a fan of jargon, but this book uses titles which are very sensible headings and which seem to "do what it says on the tin".

Sue Lownds has some great ideas for managing change effectively and obviously had a consultancy team which blended into the background for most of the project and only appeared in the forefront at certain times when the need arose. I always think that these people are worth their weight in gold, because they are not trying to take over.

The other big bonus for the author and her team is that the construction team members were willing to act completely against the grain, putting aside the usual confrontational blame-culture methods of resolving difficulties and, instead, looking for positive ways of getting this massive project pack on track (excuse the pun!). Little did they know how blessed they would be in having someone like Sue Lownds to help them.

The techniques identified in this book would probably work well in any organisation undergoing change and that is why it is a bible which needs to be kept permanently close at hand. You will need to be able to refer to this at almost any time.

An excellent reference book for tools and techniques on dealing with knotty problems relating to people and projects - irreplaceable.

If you found this book interesting and useful, you should try the authors next volume - "The Vanilla Cocept" which is for those people who want to get themselves and others moving in an organision!

"Fast Track To Failure a user's guide to abject misery" (1993) is HUGELY hilarious. As Heinlein's character noted in 'Stranger In A Strange Land', humor is all based on a 'terrible-wrongness'. If that's true, then therein lies the root of where the laughter is found in 'FastTrack'.

Seriously, this book is FUNNY! 174 pages and everyone of them has some outrageous premise or idea that grabs you like a kind of comedic-roadkill at which you can't help but look.

'Fast Track...' is fascinating and poignant at the same time. Even the preface by Amis E. Rabelman is a genuine guffaw-generator. If you like Robert Klein, the comedian, you'll LOVE Gareth Harvey as we can all relate to the common situations in which the humor is found. And, like Klein, Harvey's sense of humor simultaneously operates on many levels.

'FastTrack To Failure' holds the hallowed place on my shelf as 'Funniest Book I Own' Thank you Mr. Harvey for this WONDERFUL reflection of what it is to be human. If there's an Australian complement to Dave Barry then Gareth Harvey is the heir obvious - and I'm not making this up.

Once again a member of the Armed Forces steps forward to face and defeat the enemy. Where do these men and women come from who confront and perform daily life threatening duties?

Fast Track Visual Basic.NET is an excellent follow-up book to the successful Public Beta version. I constantly use this book in the first instance, rather than the larger Professional Desktop books - because it provides me with concise & pragmatic explanations of the key technical issues in a manner that is intuitive.

Back in early 2001, when Visual Studio.NET public beta was released I rushed out and bought a copy of VB.NET Programming With the Public Beta & C# Programming With the Public Beta. Recently I had the pleasure of working as a technical reviewer on both of the sequels: I am a time-poor developer and architect and rely on ensuring that I have access to quality information and value greatly a concise real-world professional explanation.

Generally, as busy developers, we do not have the time to read a book from cover to cover but I found that the Fast Track book is actually well-suited for this because it is so well written and full of interesting issues; although it is also great to use simply as a reference book. But what really sells me on this book is its professional and friendly atmosphere; the craftsmanship of the authors; choice of content and clarity of explanation.

A risk facing many VB.NET developers is that they will not comprehensively understand full Object Orientated programming nor the broader functionality of .NET; having been nurtured on legacy VB's. A C++ or Java developer moving to C# will have an enormous advantage over a legacy VB developer; however this book provides an excellent chapter that simply and clearly articulates the new object-orientated capabilities of our language in a manner that quickly offers the opportunity to bridge the gap.

Apart from the expected syntax and ADO.NET chapters there is excellent discussion of creating a Windows Service, Installation & Deployment and the big issue of Interoperability and Migration (invoking COM and calling Windows API's and using the migration wizard).

The book is full of explanations that simplify complex issues, that are well supported by short, realistic & pragmatic examples and offers a comprehensive understanding of our new & very powerful development paradigm.