error Books

Aughh, I can't believe I bought this book without reading reviews first! I had found the Precalc Demystified book to be very helpful, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with another one in the same series. Wrong!!! I am on Chapter TWO, and so far there have been so many ridiculous errors that I just can't continue with the book. Because of all the errors (and then the creeping, nagging feeling: is *that* an error, or is my understanding wrong??) the book has pretty much been an impediment to understanding. I have spent more time on the internet clarifying concepts, and with pen and paper re-working the bizarrely wrong example calculations, than I have spent learning from the book. I only wish I had not begun to make margin notes in it, because now I can't return it. :(

I've had the book for a couple days now and will be returning it. There are far too many errors to be a reliable self-teaching guide.

This was a poorly written book and like many of the previous reviewers, I found this book filled with errors and relatively useless information. While it does indeed cover a lot of basic concepts, if you're looking to try and understand the concepts, the book will fail miserably.

While reviewing the quizzes I find myself constantly going back to the chapter to see if I had missed anything only to see that the chapter simply didn't cover the material.

I'm quite a fan of the other demystified books like differential equations, but this book I'm afraid would lead to false sense of self confidence.

I'm glad to have gotten this book as an e-version from the library -- it's not worth paying money for, and hardly worth wasting paper on. Lots of misguided analogies -- molecular configuration is likened to football plays -- and many contradictory typos, ie C6H12O6 described first as sucrose, then as fructose (it's really fructose), formulaic error mentioned by other reviewers... I haven't even got halfway through (I'll read the rest as a guideline because I need to test into at least basic college chem next week), but I'm already going to web sources for explanations on things like atomic orbitals, which are totally confusing in this writing.

Finally, examples such as the following are just plain insulting.
"Example 7.4
"What would you do if an experimental procedure called for 1 M of hydrochloric acid (HCl) and all you had in the lab was 12 M HCl? Could you use what you had on hand? Sure! Just prepare the 1 M HCl by measuring a volume 1/12 or 82 milliliters of the concentrated solution into 1 liter of distilled water. The final concentration is equal to 1 M HCl."

I mean, honestly!

The only plus is that I feel smarter, being able to notice how many mistakes are in this.

Nice cover; great illustrations, charts, tables, and diagrams; neat outlines; however, the book is of poor quality. It introduces concepts without explaination as if it assumes you know them. This begins to happen around chapter 4. You begin to feel lost as you progress through the book. There are virtually no guides to help indicate what is an important point to remember. There are questions given at the end of the chapters that have answers that are difficult to locate or deduce. I would highly recommend "Chemistry: A Self-Teaching Guide" by Wiley & Sons which is of far greater quality.

They say that the side in a war that makes the fewest mistakes wins!
This certainly illustrates this in a most succinct manner!

This book is amazing in its number of errors, shallowness of analysis, and conceptual ignorance. Even for the most significant battles of World War II, the author gets numerous facts wrong. For example, in discussing the Pacific war, he notes the Japanese had 2 carriers sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea (they lost 1 small one) and 3 at Midway (4 were sunk). He states that German blundered by not launching an amphibious invasion of England, even though the Germans lost the war in the air(most military historians would regard launching an amphibious invasion without having air supremacy against a country with naval supremacy suicide). He blames the German Air Force for the fact that German industry didn't go into a war footing until 1943. Huh? Blaming an armed service for flawed industrial policies? This is the most error filled history book I've ever seen and ranks top among the biggest blunders on military history in the 20th century. Considering the high quality of the History Channel, it's amazing that they would associate themselves with such a book of errors.

This is one of the worst books I've ever read on military history. You have to wonder how someone can get a book like this published. The author is a journalist, but even that is usually not a disqualifying factor with a book on military history, or any sort of history for that matter. Journalists, after all, deal in fact also.

In this case, however, the book is filled with factual errors, and you get the idea that the author sometimes missed the point of a battle or campaign that he was recounting to you. Given that he's so often mistaken about what happened, it's not much of a surprise that his interpretations are going to be poor also.

All of this leads to my final conclusion. I would avoid this book at all costs. I don't get rid of any book that's non-fiction, usually, but this one's going to the used bookstore. I expect them to reject it, and I'll probably wind up giving it to the library, who will overprice it in their book sale at $1.00.

This book was prepared as a companion to a History Channel series and it has the depth and detail one would expect from a television program. As some of the other reviewers have noted, there are sporadic factual mistakes, but the greater shortcoming, to my mind, is the lack of much to say. The factual issues discussed are pretty much common knowledge to anyone having much familiarity at all with military history (or history in general) in the Twentieth Century. Worse yet, the insights and commentary provided are little more than unimaginitive "conventional wisdom." I had some suspicions about this book being of a mass market paperback quality, but I picked it up because it was one of the first in .mp3 audio format. This proved to be a mistake as my first concerns were conclusively proven correct.

As other reviewers have said, it's shallow, riddled with errors, and ultimately unsatisfying. Yet it mentions a lot of incidents, some of which I'd never heard of, like the Queen Mary colliding with her escort. This book's salvation would be a good bibiography, so the interested reader could follow up -- but there is none. No notes. Nothing. For a good book of this sort, read "From the Jaws of Victory", by Charles Fair.

The author should be sued for deception. The biggest blunder I've ever made was buying this book.

One thing you should realize about this book is that it is not a detailed investment book. If you are looking for such a book you should pick up something by Bill Bernstein or Jack Bogle. The vast majority of this book deals with behavioral finance (and the stupid mistakes people can make as a result) and colorful stories of huge investment blunders that modern professionals have made. I think it is critical to understand the mistakes that people can make because of their mood, fears, unbridled optimism, etc. This book tries to adddress much of that. The chapters dealing with huge plunders that professionals have made are entertaining and informative.

Only one chapter in this book deals with specific investment strategy. Of course, it deals with the subject in a summary fashion. That being said, however, it actually is not a bad chapter, especially if this is not the first investment book you have read. One thing I must point out is that I think that the author's suggested asset allocation chart is wrong. His chart on page 261 indicates that if you want a 10% return over a period of time you should invest 50% of your money in bonds, 12% in cash and 38% in equities. I think if you followed his suggestion you would get a return significantly lower than 10%. I think the chart inflates the returns you should expect for any given allocation and should be ignored. With this one caveat, I highly recommend this book.

This book is one of the most peculiar I have ever read in terms of handling its subject. The book's title subject isn't directly addressed until chapters 12-14, and then doesn't provide anything you couldn't read about in a more detailed and interesting way somewhere else. It's as though the publisher's marketing department tried to create a title to make the book into something that it really isn't.

Then, all of the proactive advice is saved for chapter 15. That material is about as developed as a magazine article. You need to have specific financial goals, determine a reasonable investment rate of return to seek (in light of your age and goals), make appropriate asset allocations, and then find cheap ways to implement your approach (such as with index funds and exchange traded funds).

The material in the earlier chapters is entertaining, and generally well done (and properly referenced) but it just doesn't fit well into a book to teach you how to invest. It's like a series of interesting factoids, without connecting the dots very well. Any of John Bogle's books would do you more good in terms of understanding these same issues when it comes to your investing. A new book, A Mathematician Plays the Market, is also a superior story to this one.

It's very hard to scale up article-sized bits of knowledge into a book. I recommend that Professor Nofsinger find a co-author for a future edition to help him better string together his story. His knowledge level seems good, and he would seem to be capable of producing a much better book in the future. I hope he does.

I wish I had read raspell's review before I bought the book. Now I've given up in frustration after 6 chapters, or about one-third through. As raspell pointed out, not one investment blunder by anyone rich OR famous was mentioned in the first third of the book.

Not only that, it is peppered with generalisms which the author makes little attempt to explain, and which in any case sound fishy to me. Like this one: you are only rewarded for taking market risk, not stock-specific risk, hence there is no point taking stock-specific risk. If I remember my rational economics, all risk must be rewarded, otherwise no one will take them.

Finally, it contains dangerous analytical flaws, which can lead to bad investment decisions. For example, it asserts wrongly that it is illogical if a stock's market capitalisation is less than the value of an asset it owns. This totally ignores the question of how the asset is funded. If a company owns nothing but an asset worth $1b, funded by loans worth $1b, is the company worth $1b?

I would seriously not recommend this book to anyone.

PS. I have since gone on to read Chapters 12-14, which deal with the blunders of five big-time traders. Three chapters out of 15 - that's a poor execution of the title, I'm afraid. I can get more from an hour or two on the net.

Investment Blunders of the Rich and Famous? A great title for a book that enticed this sucker to buy it. But really the book is nothing but a general examination of investment theory. Let me save you the purchase of the book. You can't beat the market and studies prove if you try you will waste too much money in brokerage comissions. How depressing!!!

And who are these rich and famous? They are nowhere to be found. He does have a chapter of famous losers like Nick Leeson who broke an English bank and Robert Citron who bankrupted Orange County California. But that is as close as you get to this misleading title.

About the only positive I found in this book was an in-depth study of investor's behavioral patterns. Overall, I'd recommend you pass on this book.

I read Tunnel Vision because I wanted to hear Robert O Marshall's side of the story. I concluded that only the most hard-core of the wrongly convicted junkies could believe his version of this saga. It is simply implausible, incredible and over the top.
First of all, each page drips with Marshall's unabashed narcissism. He's the guy who's the best at everything. The best tennis player, the best blackjack player, the best skier. All the hot women want him. He writes this story like some kind of prisoners fantasy of the high life he once lived.
But after reading the book, I came away with a new theory as to what happened here. I think Marshall steadfastly maintains his innocence because it was never his original intent to have his wife murdered. Many unhappily married men have a dark thought now and then about what life would be like if their wife were just gone and away with. A chance encounter with an out-of-towner, Robert Cumber, turned that dark thought into a sprouting seed.
Marshall met Cumber at a party in May of 1984 ( a party he didn't even want to go to, but his wife insisted he attend. ) He writes that he and Cumber sat at the bar for four hours, ' got tight ', and confided in each other their marital problems. Cumber said he knew a former Sheriff's deputy back in Louisiana.
For Marshall, the great risk assessor, who named his own boat Double Down, the wheels started turning. Who but a former law enforcement officer to be a hired hitman? Marshall proceeded to feel out the situation and decided that summer that it was worth the risk to hire somebody to kill his wife. He would be rich and rid of her and free to be with the new love of his life.
There is a saying, Nobody talks, Everybody walks. Problem was, his hit man decided to talk to save himself when the police investigation found out about him. In the end, Marshall bet it all and he lost.
The other irritating aspect of this book, was the weak substitute of people's real names. For instance, he refers to Mudman Simon as Mo Muddling. Come on, this was a death row inmate. What is he protecting? The guy's reputation?
I gave the book two stars because it was fairly interesting, if obviously a false story Marshall has had decades to manufacture. And I don't think he is a dangerous criminal or a threat to others. In fact, as he was once the big dog in the Toms River social scene, he probably is the brightest guy at New Jersey State Prison. The murder of his wife was a one time desperation deal. He rolled the dice and he lost.

I'm innocent! The universal cry of all men (and women) on death row. Or, "ok, the evidence was videotaped and witnessed by six nuns, so NOW I'VE FOUND JESUS so don't kill me."

This man takes chutzpah to a new level. Everybody's soooo mean to him. Those nasty old prosecutors and cops who followed the evidence right to his smarmy door.

The man is guilty and turns and twists to hard to try to wiggle out that this book needs a chiropractor.

A sorry attempt to explain how he was "framed" for his wifes murder. Bad lawyers, lying cops, corrupt legal system. Yeah right! He is guilty as sin and deserves to be right where he is. This book is a waste.

He, Jeffrey MacDonald, John Orr and Diane Downs should all be roomies.

It amazes me how murderers are allowed permitted to write books designed to paint themselves as "innocent."

I hope no one bought this!

An interesting book because of its author; a convicted murderer. Marshall and his late sister did a good job with the writing, but fail to answer too many questions. Why Marshall spent thousands supposedly hiring private investigators from Louisiana to check on missing money in his Harrah's account, something which is central to the story, is never really cleared up. Nor does he address why even his two eldest sons concluded that he was guilty -- not by itself proof of guilt, but worth wondering about. As literature and as debate material, ultimately disappointing.

The promise of this book, stated on the back cover, is to uncover a "deception [by Churchill] that propelled ... Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union."

That promise is never delivered on. The writing style is merely passable. After a few false starts, the book goes into a very long digression into German and Nazi history which has nothing to do with the book topic.

The author constantly belittles Churchill as the self-indulgent imperialistic "old bulldog," "that damned warmonger at 10 Downing Street." Yet while the author once calls Hitler a "demon," Hitler is virtually praised as the misunderstood hope of a unified Germany, a man who by May 1941 had reached as far geographically as he wanted -- a man who only bombed London in an attempt to reach peace with England, and who was willing to give up France if England would only agree to peace. The holocaust? Why, blame that on Churchill -- the holocaust was started when Germany was tricked into invading Russia.

Why did Hitler invade Russia? The author can't make up his mind. Sometimes the reason for the Russian invasion is to convince England that Hitler's desire for peace with England is sincere, and other times Hitler was tricked into invading Russian because there was ALREADY a de facto peace treaty between Germany and England reached in May 1941. Somehow thrown into the mix is that by reaching peace with Germany and encouraging Hitler's invasion of Russia, this would force the U.S. to come into the war.

Whether Hess' flight into Scotland to meet the supposed leader of the British "Peace Party" came out of Hess' deluded mind, or was a secret mission from Hitler, that surely doesn't translate into either a "secret peace" or an intention on Churchill's part to cause Hitler to invade Russia.

Klizer lost his credibility on page 30 when he quotes Hess saying he turned his plane inverted so he could drop out and parachute down, and while he was dropping out he righted the plane and re-started the engine (so it would "hurtle to earth"). This is physically impossible, and otherwise non-sensical. The uneveness is between the early pages, which have a jerky and coy quality reminiscent of a lot of low end writing, and a marked change in tone to the sweeping style of a professional historian. It seems that two persons are writing the book. Maybe it's the lack of consistency, but I get the feeling that the historian is paraphrasing somebody else. The footnotes are mainly to secondary sources, like newspaper articles. It seems the research was simply compiling statements by others without any independent original work

Kilzer, a prize winning journalist, has produced yet another revisionist 'history' examining Winston Churchill's pivotal role in the Second World War. His prose can be engaging, his suggestions controversial, his conclusions thought provoking, and his documentation dubious. He jumps back and forth among a variety of persons and topics at a frenetic pace and with a bevy of 'revelations.' His premise is overstated, if not flawed, by the need to rehabilitate Hitler's reputation which he believes "distorted" while Churchill has become "a god." (p. 78) Thus, he endeavors to convince his readers that Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess and Hitler were both profound Anglophiles who wanted to share power with the British Empire while eventually destroying the hated communistic Soviet Union. Unfortunately, so the story goes, Churchill's immense ego, militarism, and Germanophobia compelled him to play a dangerous political game which co-opted the British 'peace party,' lured Hess to entrapment in Britain, induced Hitler to a Russian Gotterdammerung, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to decisive military intervention; all of which engendered mass genocide in Europe and the ultimate demise of the British Empire! It should immediately be apparent that this cause and effect Tour de Force ascribes far more power and pre-meditation to Churchill than is hardly possible for the embattled head of a tottering empire. Also, Kilzer's over-reliance on numerous works by vehement anti-Churchill 'historians' such as David Irving or the diaries of noted Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels and Walter Schnellenberg is certainly not credible. His numerous errors regarding military history and strategy do not inspire confidence, especially references such as the British assault at Verdun in 1916 (p. 139) when he obviously meant the Somme; his assignation of the sole blame for the Dardanelles Disaster in 1915 to Churchill, a very old red herring; or his continual remarks that the Royal Navy, still the world's foremost naval power, was powerless to resist a German invasion in 1940. Of special amusement is the great strategic weight he assigns to the Iraqi Revolt of 1941 which was, in actuality, little more than a sideshow. CHURCHILL'S DECEPTION is not the worst example of the revisionist excesses regarding the Second World War, Churchill's reputation, or the Holocaust which now abound in print, film, and the Internet. He is also not as vitriolic as Irving and some othes and he does raise important questions regarding reality and perception, then and now, although resolution remains as elusive as ever and subject to fantastic speculation which shows little sign of abating.

There are readers who will pick up this novel because of its links to the beloved James Stewart -Marlene Dietrich movie. Please be advised ,if this is your own situation ,that all the movie takes from the book is its title .Everything else has been jettisoned including the tone of the story .The movie was gently comedic in tone being a parody of the Western as well as a Western in its own right .Brand's novel is altogether more serious in tone being essentially a straightforward revenge Western

Destry ,while not exactly a criminal ,has achieved some notoriety in the town of Wem -he is not noted for backing down when trouble raises its head ,and is handy with gun ,knife and fists .This has earned him many enemies one of whom ,"Chet",while posing as his friend sets him up on a charge of train robbery .He is convicted by a jury made up of his enemies and sent to prison for 10 years despite a powerful plea of innocence and an exposure of the juror's ulterior motives .He vows revenge and when released after 6 years the jurors flee the town in fear of their lives .
Yet he seems a broken man -timorous and shattered in spirit by his incarceration .Encouraged by this two of the jurors ,The Ogden brothers ,test his mettle in a gun battle and are shot down .Destry was play acting -he still intends revenge .Two jurors are broken by means short of death -shown as cowards or having their links to political intersts exposed .Others are hunted down and shot in fair fight
Chet plots with the remaining jurors to kill Destry all the while posing as his friend and Destry can only rely on a hero worsshipping boy and Charlotte the woman who loves him .
The book is by todays standards somewhat windily written and the sermonising tone sits poorly with todays literary taste but overall this is a good read and the hero is shown as not the fastest gun or most handy in a fight being bested by the baddie at a critical time

I am not sure that it will appeal beyond the ghetto of the Western readership but its worth your time if you have an interest in the genre and in vintage pulp writing

I bought this book because I love the Destry movie with Jimmy Stewart and the TV series with John Gavin (1964). This book bears no resemblence to either.

I'm giving this book one star NOT because it's not the stories I already knew. It's poorly written, and the people speak in very thick, uneducated vernacular. None of the characters are likeable, good guys and bad guys alike.

The only interesting thing about this book is that it is written not about the "old West," but in the 1930s, this book was about the CURRENT West. I can't recommend this book unless you are passionate about the history of the West.

This book might be great for a first or second-grader. It contains trivial information that possibly appeals to readers whose educational ambitions are far from being realized. Instead of debunking historical misconceptions such as (1)the speed of light is instanteneous (Aristotle, Kepler), (2) a star's brightness is due to its distance alone(Newton), (3) meteors are of terrestrial origin - 'thunderstones' or materials catapulted from volcanoes, or (4)the absense of gail-force winds proves that the earth is stationary... we instead get lectured that (1) the position of a planet excerts negligible influence on a new-born child,(2)the heat radiated from the sun is not generated by something burning, (3) winds do not cause the tides, etc. Give me a break.

Considering the misinformation of the general public on astronomical matters (and matters in general), this book casts a welcome light on some of them. The author, further, has a web site listing even more misconceptions, given by students in his classes as well as contributors from his web site audience. The author also delves into the Why of how these misconceptions have arisen in people's minds.

The book is not perfect, and in fact could lead to the furtherance of some other misconceptions. For example, he lists a flat No to the question of whether black holes are black. A correspondence with the author indicates he was thinking of small black holes--with considerably less mass than the moon. Such small black holes would indeed glow, via Hawking radiation, but larger ones would indeed be black by anyone's standards, including those multi-solar-massive ones hypothesized to be at the centers of galaxies. However Prof. Comins' reply did rid me of my misconception that it is only for a short period of time that small black holes glow.

Alluding to the fact that the moon keeps the same side toward the earth all the time, the book states that in the lunar sky, the earth "won't budge, no matter how many days, weeks, months, years, or decades you watch it". In actuality, due to the eccentricity of the moon's orbit and the tilt of its axis relative to its orbit, the moon's center librates as seen from the earth, and as seen from the moon, the earth moves in the sky with a range of 16 degrees East-West (8 degrees either way from center) and 13 degrees north-south. As a result the earth could get to be 20 degrees from where you first saw it. That's 10 earth diameters, or 40 earth-viewed full moon's width, so it really more than "budges". Prof. Comins explains in correspondence that he "chose to be glib about this point because it would take quite a lot to describe issues related to libration from scratch with only a small gain in insight by the general reader." Yet one of his listed misconceptions was of the center of mass of the moon's core being at the geometric center of the moon; that difference is only about 1/2 mile, out of the 2000-mile lunar diameter.

In the book, Prof. Comins states that it is never safe to look directly at the sun without a proper solar filter. He doesn't exempt looking at the corona during totality of a solar eclipse. In his correspondence, he states "Concerning looking directly at the Sun during a total eclipse, it is definitely not safe to do so. A close friend of mine lost a significant amount of his vision doing so. Looking directly at the corona during a total eclipse is still extremely dangerous. Keep in mind that the Sun is in totality for only a matter of minutes, and as soon as it comes out, its brightness is dangerous." While I can understand the impact of personal tragedies, it's also true that people travel thousands of miles to view totality directly. I have done so four times and viewed the totally eclipsed sun with the unaided eye and even through a telescope. And to do so, one cannot have a filter, and my eyes are unscathed, as are those of many hundreds, or thousands, who go on eclipse cruises and expeditions. They have accurate predictions of the timing and accurate timers, and call out to all to "look away" at the appropriate time. As the NASA web site on eye safety during solar eclipses states: "In spite of these precautions, the total phase of an eclipse can and should be viewed without any filters whatsoever. The naked eye view of totality is completely safe and is overwhelmingly awe-inspiring!"

Found this book very enlightening.Mormons can't complain when this book uses their own writings to show contradictions and errors of the LDS Church

If he stuck to the facts it would be 1 or 2 pages long. He could have put all he knew about Mormon's on the cover.

I had high hopes for this book when I bought it. The book promised large gains in my aviation weather knowledge. I actually felt a little underwhelmed to be honest. This is, in essence, an introductory level aviation weather textbook.

I am a current airline pilot flying MD-80's, and think that as a General Aviation weather resource, this book is OK. It would be particularly useful for someone studying for their Instrument rating or initial Commercial certificate. For jet transport operations, though, this book is only marginally useful.

This book does contain good information, but understand that it is not very detailed information (I read the entire book in two hours in a hotel room), and is marginally useful to experienced turbine pilots. The book is partly redeemed by numerous case studies, that show the relevance of the materiel. The case studies are very interesting, but lack depth. For better case studies I recommend the NASA ASRS monthly reports (blue sheets) that are mailed free to interested people. For better real world weather flying, stick with Richard Collins for GA or "Fly The Wing" by Jim Webb for turbine flying.

I just finished this book and was disappointed. It was not very good and the writing is sixth grade level; perhaps Mr. Bruce should stick to his Taco Bell job. There is nothing in there about the Indo-Aryan invasion of Europe; it is mostly about a Semitic patriarch building his dynasty.

Old Gray Mouse