Yellow page advertising is not the most fascinating subject but the author manages to keep it interesting, and more importantly he imparts a huge amount of valuable information.

I learned more reading this book about yellow pages, and about advertising and marketing than I had learned in almost 20 years of running my own business.

For those of us who are spending significant money each and every single month on yellow pages advertising, this book is a godsend. It explains what really works and what doesn't, which directories to advertise in and which to avoid, and above all how to make your ads work as well as they possibly can.

Beyond that it's humorous and extremely entertaining.

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR YELLOW PAGES is the perfect step by step plan for increasing the results of your directory advertising and your small business marketing in general. The book made me laugh and what I learned made me money.

I am an HTML developer who works with ASP websites all the time. I do not know ASP nor VB, but I wanted to learn ASP.NET because I know it will be everywhere in a year or so. I've had good luck with the 24 Hours/21 Days series from Sams Publishing so I got that book first. Big mistake.

I must have read the first three chapters three or four times and I was still confused. The author assumed a lot of knowledge of VB and ASP and I was totally and completely frustrated.

The other day I purchased ASP.NET for Dummies and I absolutely love this book. If you've never written ASP or worked with VB then this is the book you neeed to get. Bill explains everything in a simple way and each code example is explained.

To be quite honest I have not been a big fan of the "Dummies" series, but author Bill Hatfield has written a real gem. He seems to have a clear understanding of the skill set of his target audience - novice programmer. Yet he treats his audience with respect with intelligent dialog delivered at an even pace. This combines to create a solid foundation of learning. I was particularly impressed with Part III of Chapter 6 'Classy Objects and Methodical Properties.' In this section he introduces the reader to programming objects, a sometimes-intimidating concept. By using a "real-world" example - his car, he clearly constructs and then breaks down the components that constitute an object. Outstanding through and through. If you are new to programming and interested in learning the basics of ASP.net I highly recommend this book.

ASP.NET for Dummies is an excellent book for the beginning .NET developer and programmer. I am a web designer that decided to learn to code for the web using something other than Javascript and HTML. The book was great to learn programming basics as well as getting me up and running in .NET. I have started down a path of learning a great code language, VB, and I owe it to this book. Highly recommended.

Culinary Artistry is a book some may passover or leaf through in the bookstore for the likes of the Joy of Cooking or a Martha Stewart volume 20 cookbook. But look closer, the charts and the what-goes-well-with-what sections of this book alone are worth the price if only to give the food lover an inspired moment to create a dish with ingredients he or she may love. If you find yourself saying, "gee, I'd really love to have salmon tonight but I don't know what to put with it", pick up this book, find Salmon and refer to the extensive list of items that the interviewed chefs prefer with it and an idea is born. After that, all it takes is a little know-how in the kitchen and you've created your very own gourmet meal. If you choose to read from front to back you'll also discover page after page of insightful information from some of the nation's top chef's. Take your time, it's not a novel but it can be read like one and used as reference even after you've reached the last page. For the money, this is a book that will stay on your shelf for years to come and still manage to provide a new idea each time. So put down the Martha Stewart Haloween cookie issue and give Culinary Artistry a try, "It's a good thing". Sorry about that last one, she's infectious.

"CULINARY ARTISTRY receives Honorable Mention as one of the year's best culinary reference books...[It] offers insights into creative cooking."
--THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page go where no culinary writers have gone before, exploring what inspires great chefs to create new flavor combinations, dishes and menus."
--INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK REVIEW

"CULINARY ARTISTRY chronicles the creative process of culinary composition and explores the architecture of flavors, dishes and menus."
--NATIONAL CULINARY REVIEW

"One of the best culinary books of the year."
--TIME OUT: NEW YORK

"A great achievement."
--Chef Daniel Boulud

"Fascinating...A philosophy book on the culinary arts."
--Arthur Schwartz, "Food Talk" on WOR RADIO

"A wealth of information."
--Lindsey Shere, pastry chef, Chez Panisse

"Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page have set me free...The sequel to 1995's BECOMING A CHEF, this fat volume offers limitless ways to compose dishes using the idea of food matches and menu plans from 30 of America's top chefs."
--Patty Stearns, THE DETROIT FREE PRESS

"I unconditionally recommend the book CULINARY ARTISTRY. One afternoon won't cut it with this book -- this is a definite buy. It tells when different fruits, vegetables, fish, etc. are in season, and how to make them taste good without the expense of a culinary school education. It will save your family a load of money, and greatly improve your own creativity with food and flavors."
--Liz Tarditi, chef and columnist, TODAY'S GOURMET

I am a self-taught home cook who enjoys the activities of the kitchen. I entered the cooking arena one of the standard ways, using cookbooks. Collections of recipes familarized me with the techniques and ethnic cooking styles. Gradually, my cookbook collection included reference books that provided some of the theory behind tastes and preparation styles. Gold's 1-2-3 series, Peterson's Sauces, and others introduced to me the philosophies that allow a cook to go beyond mimicking a recipe to improvising and even creating a dish. Culinary Artistry is perhaps the best available reference for learning about the traditions of combining flavors and food groups.

It contains vital information that I suspect is taught only in some of the culinary schools. It provides valuable charts of information about cooking and menu planning. The book contains sections on Menus, including a seasonality chart and a chart explaining successful seasoning combinations. There is a section for Composing Flavors, the highlight of which is a chart showing successful food contrasts. Another section involves Composing A Dish. Here there is a chart showing great food matches and one showing seasoning matches. The Composing A Menu section offers a chart showing frequent accompaniments to meats and paragraphs presenting theories about Hors Douevres, Cheeses, and Desserts. This was a sparse and incomplete passage in an otherwise comprehensive book. Finally, there was a fun section addressing the Evolution of Chef's Styles. Here the authors provide sample menus comparing chef's offerings from earlier decades to their present day productions.

The volume offers multiple anecdotes, quotes, and side bars concerning the views of popular chefs. Various recipes are interspersed to illustrate the principles. My one criticism was that the book was laid out like a college textbook. Photos, captions, quotes, highlighted lines, sidebars, and other areas compete on the same page, magazine style. The book serves as reference, frequently glanced at rather than read straight through as a narrative.

It's been 5 long years since the last Calvin and Hobbes book hit store shelves (and, subsequently, every Calvin and Hobbes fan's bookshelf). In "It's a Magical World," the last group of previously unprinted Calvin and Hobbes strips was published, about a year after the strip's end. For any other comic strip, that would be it. Every strip could be found in one of the printed collections, and the author was done creating, so there would be little to fill a new book with. Luckily for us (or, perhaps, because of us), Calvin and Hobbes wasn't done through yet. Let's get one thing out of the way right now: there are no new strips to be found in this collection. There are no new pieces of art, like those found in the Calvin and Hobbes Treasury collections. There are no new poems, like those found in some Calvin and Hobbes books such as "Yukon Ho!". There isn't anything new, save for some new thoughts and insights from author Bill Watterson and, for the first time ever, the original, uncolored versions of the Sunday strips shown (eraser, white out, pencil marks and all). With so little new content offered, you may be asking why they bothered putting this set out. The answer lies with an Ohio State Professor and museum curator named Lucy Shelton Caswell.Caswell, who also writes the forward to this book, put together the first Calvin and Hobbes art exhibit at The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library (the exhibit runs from September 10, 2001 to January 15, 2002, for those of you who will be in the area). This collection's release coincides with the festival and is meant for people who can't make it to the show. In this book, every strip on display in the festival (including, once again, the original, uncolored versions of the Sunday strips) is printed. The book (although sporting a bland cover) is very nice to hold, read, and look at. It is the same long shape as the later Calvin and Hobbes books, so the entire comic can be shown in full format, without being shrunk down or hacked up. This format is far superior to the old, square-ish collections even though, as Watterson humorously points out, it will stick off the end of your bookshelf. Unlike the other Calvin and Hobbes books, "Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages..." is printed on a very nice glossy paper, and below each strip is original publish date is listed. Everything about this book, aside from its boring cover, screams quality. So how about the strips? Spectacular, of course (we are talking Calvin and Hobbes here). Even though this book is meant to focus on the artistic aspect of the comic, you'll be happy to know that Watterson didn't only select his best looking comics for the collection (i.e., this isn't a collection of 36 "dinosaur strips." In fact, the book contains only one dinosaur strip and only one Spaceman Spiff strip. This is surprising because, as Calvin and Hobbes fans know, strips of these two breeds were the most artistically advanced). Instead, the edition showcases Watterson's evolution as an artist, exhibiting, as the title of the book would suggest, a few strips from each year of Calvin and Hobbes' 10 year run. Of course, the early strips are crude compared to the later works, but the reader will perhaps be surprised to see that Watterson was testing some pretty original ideas even in the early days (such as nearly wordless strips of Calvin and Hobbes dancing, or strips containing only a single panel of Calvin and Hobbes riding in their wagon). One of the things that surprised me while reading through "Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages..." was that, despite Calvin and Hobbes' amazing artwork, Watterson seems most proud of his achievement in panel formatting. He, of course, is famous for getting his strip a full half page in the Sunday papers (a format my paper, The Boston Globe, still adheres too even after Calvin and Hobbes' demise). Watterson talks about the pains of creating Sunday strips before his victory, where newspaper editors would go as far as to simply hack off the top set of panels for a strip. With this knowledge, the reader of "Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages..." will no doubt begin to notice that the set of panels in every strip contains "throw away" jokes, meaning gags that aren't necessary for the rest of the strip to work (i.e. the strips really begin in the 3rd panel). But panel formatting isn't the only great feature of these Sunday strips. But the book is not perfect. First and foremost: we've seen it all before. The sad truth is, every strip is available in some other collection. Sure, the sketches are new, but trust me, they'll have you salivating for more rather than quenching your thirst. Secondly, this book is short. You could go through it in half an hour, and even if you take time to really compare each non-colored strip to it's colored version, you'll be done in about an hour. Will you be going back for a second viewing? You bet. But some more strips would have been nice (I must say though, many of the strips used are great choices, both well drawn and hilarious). The final problem is that you'll encounter a lot of repeat information. Many of the strips in this collection also appear in the "10th Anniversary Book," and Watterson says pretty much the exact same thing in this book as he did there...This book is worth every penny, and I can whole-heatedly state that every Calvin and Hobbes fan should have one. I think this collection would make a great and unusual coffee table book, for there are very few books celebrating the art of comic strips. How about he big question: is "Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages..." better than the "10th Anniversary Book?" No way. "The 10th Anniversary Book" beats "Sunday Pages" in every category imaginable, except for the quality of the paper it's printed on. Looks like we'll have to wait for "Calvin and Hobbes: The Complete Collection" in 2003 to see the "10th Anniversary Book" dethroned. This book is, however, a true pleasure to read. Pick it up, you won't be disappointed.

It's hard to comment on this book without a bit of nostalgia for the good old days when Calvin and Hobbes was a daily strip. It was, and remains to this day, simply the funniest, and best comic ever written. This new book doesn't offer any new cartoons, but offers a refreshing look at some old favorites. This book is a delight because it provides new insight into the brilliance of the best of Calvin and Hobbes.

Calvin & Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995 compares the original pencil sketches Watterson drew with the final strip that ran in the Sunday paper. Included are comments Watterson added on his creative process, shining a light on the genius behind the boy and his tiger. They are at times witty and wistful, and the comics are, as always, laugh-till-it-hurts funny.

This beautifully printed and put together collection is the companion to an exhibition of Calvin & Hobbes strips at Ohio State University. While it doesn't comprise any new material, it is a must have for every Calvin & Hobbes fan for a variety of reasons.

First, each cartoon is presented with the original, black and white sketch on the left, and the final, colored version on the right. It is genuinely fascinating to see what color can do for a strip, and it was likewise interesting to observe the number of revisions that Watterson made.

Secondly, Watterson's introduction and his notes, which accompany many of the strips, offer wonderful insight into what the strips were meant to portray, and the artistic challenges he faced. While this is similar to what he did in the Tenth Anniversary book, it is obvious that he has gained some perspective over the last six years, and his thoughts are rather more contemplative as a result.

Finally, this book is a much needed burst of nostalgia for the trying times we live in. While it has only been six years since the last strip, it feels like much longer. There's something about Calvin & Hobbes that just exudes innocence and a simpler life. It was genuinely refreshing to revisit Calvin's world, and I am now greatly looking forward to rereading all of the collections. If you likewise long for the days when you could open up your newspaper and read this strip, you won't be disappointed by this collection.

This is a wonderful feel good book that is definitely a two boxer. That's two boxes of Kleenexes that you'll need to get through this one! The very first story sets the tone for the whole book. This story about a mother and daughter and the love that they shared was the most touching and one of the best stories contained within. As with any anthology, with many authors, the writing style differs throughout and you may find yourself captured by one author and wanting to get rid of the next author all within the same chapter. I like how the editors divided the book into sections about love, attitude and self-esteem, overcoming obstacles, marriage, motherhood, special moments, living your dream, aging, finding a higher wisdom, and truths across generations. This is definitely a book that you want to share with your woman friends and female family members. There are certain stories that should be photocopied and read often, to capture the feelings they evoke. Another especially touching story was written by a nursing home nurse about the love of an elderly couple and their struggle to be together their last remaining days. Two days after the author was located to provide permission to be printed, she died, leaving her loving story to be read by the world. This book brings out many emotions that in the end make you feel glad to be a woman and respect the richness of all your life experiences. It sure has made me feel a little less challenged and lot more honored and rewarded that I share commonalities with all of the women in these wonderful stories.

I loved this book as much as the others in the Chicken Soup series. One evening while languishing in bed with the flu, I read it cover to cover. It was hard to determine whether the book or the flu made me reach for so many tissues. An incredibly heart-warming assortment of stories!

I read this book in 2 days flat!! I love it. Brought back some memories of times in my life... made me cry mostly. Who doesn't love a good cry? I'm on track to improving my personal development and have since changed my reading material to awe-inspiring stuff. I encourage all women ages 21-100+ to read this book.

Since I gave "First Test" 5 stars, I really need 6 for this one. It's even better! The second book in the Protector of the Small series, "Page" covers Keladry's last three years as a page in knighthood-training school. We meet several new characters: Lalasa, Kel's maid, whom Kel hires in order to protect her from ill treatment by others; Owen, the young page whose favorite word is "jolly"; and a new animal friend (in addition to Kel's cranky yet loyal horse, Peachblossom, and her helpful flock of sparrows), the faithful dog Jump. Kel continues to stand up to bullies and works to conquer her fear of heights. Her mysterious benefactor bestows more gifts on her. Keladry of Mindelan is an admirable and likable heroine, and in this book she shows her courage, resourcefulness and leadership ability. If you haven't read the two previous Tortallan series, The Song of the Lioness Quartet and The Immortals, don't delay! These are all well-written, exciting, fun fantasies that can be enjoyed by both young readers and grown-ups.

Ms. Pierce has managed to write yet another absolutly fantastic book. I have read all of the Alanna books; the Immortals quartet; and the circle of magic quartet. I am falling in love with this series, I bought The first test yesterday afternoon and begged my mother to go buy the sequel that night. Today I have read THE PAGE twice and THE FIRST TEST once more. I have fallen for both Neal and Cleon and am looking forward to hopefully something more between one of them and Kel in the next novel. Joren continues to puzzle me and I am dying to see who picks Kel for a squire in the next book. Owen is such a sweet heart, u cant help likeing him! Kel possess's the charm of all Ms. Pirce's other characters plus an sweet personality that makes me want her as my best friend. The only slight complaint I have is that Kel has not yet discovered who her sedret gift giver is...its SO obvious! Anyway it was a wonderful book and I cant wait for the next one!

In this new and exciting adventure, Kel starts off by being an eleven year old, second-grade page. After proving to everyone that she is here to stay, she does not think that Joren and his gang of bullies will bother her or other first-year pages again; however, the beginning of the term sees Keladry getting into yet another fight. Following this fight, she makes a new friend, Owen.

However, he is not the only new addition to Kel's group of friends. Kel soon comes to love Jump, a palace dog, who is old and has lost an ear and bears many scars. Kel also hires Lalasa, Gower's neice, as a maid, thinking that by doing so, Lalasa wil stop being mistreated by men. Kel teaches Lalasa how to defend herself, at first against her maid's wish, but Lalasa soon evolves into a strong, independant young woman who is not afraid to let men know the meaning of the word "no".

Lalasa is not the only person that evolves. Now that Kel has reached puberty, she must learn to deal with her new feelings for Neal, her best friend, and she learns the joy - and hardships - of entering womanhood and getting her menstruation. She must also learn to conquer her fear of heights, which she thinks is necessary in order for her to become a knight.

While things aren't always easy at the palace, Kel manages to pull through it all and, at the end of the book, she finally becomes a squire. This book was highly enjoyable and just as good as the previous one. I cannot wait to read the continuation, rightly entitled Squire! I am not at all disappointed and I thoroughly believe that Tamora Pierce has managed to write yet another fantasy story, filled with adventure and action. Congratulations Tamora!

There are times that I think my life was or still is hard. Well, I'm a black female who grew up in a middle-class home with two teachers as parents. College was as automatic as sleeping and eating. But, for these young men in the book "The Pact", college was as uncertain as winning the lottery. I always knew that our young black boys growing up in the inner-city had it super hard, but this book allowed me to see another side of our young brothas. They all have dreams as little kids, even though they don't see anyone in their neighborhood to emulate. Somehow, someway, Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt and George Jenkins all found the determination to succeed and become doctors. Their positive story is proof that just one person can make a difference in a kid's life. Everyone needs someone to look up to; someone to follow.

We all have gifts we can share. Read this book and feel blessed that someone in your life took the time to mentor you and be there for you; not everyone has that in their lives. I am so proud of these young men! Not only are they smart and positive, but they are cute too! What a great combination! God has truly blessed them and their family.

What a refreshing book. Thanks to Tavis Smiley for recommending it on the Tom Joyner Show.

who are in grade school and face difficulties living in the inner city or ghetto. This book has the capacity to be very inspirational to young, minority men who have a bright future and wish to fulfill dreams that their peers may not. However, if you have no children and are older than, maybe 19 or 20 years of age, this book is just "okay." Regardless, I am very proud of these young, successful men.

"The Pact" is an incredible book! I just finished reading the remarkable journey completed by Drs. Sam Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt. It's an easy, quick read ~250 pages.

If you're not familiar with their story, they are 3 young, African-American men from Newark that establish a pact at 17-years old to become doctors. Over the years, they run into many obstacles (peer pressure, arrest, finances, and family issues) that tend to dissuade so many young people from pursuing their dream. With the "I got your back" support of each other, mentors they encountered throughout their journey, and God they become doctors despite how many people had presumed their future would turn out.

Dr. George Jenkins, probably the most focused in the group, knew at a very young age that he wanted to be a dentist. In high school, the three friends attend a college presentation offering full scholarships to minority students interested in the medical field. Knowing that neither he nor his friends could afford college THIS OFFER would be their ONLY way to attend college...the formation of the pact.

Surprisingly, after completing college and med school, Sam and Rameck were still unsure if they wanted to be doctors. Sam saw business/management as his future and Rameck wanted to be an actor (he'll settle on being a rapper). (If I didn't know the outcome, I would have been in suspense until the bitter end waiting to learn if they became doctors.) The death of an important person in each of their lives confirmed that medically helping others is what they were meant to do in life.

If you're in the education field or work closely with children in your community this is an excellent book to pick up when you...

- feel like what can I do to get through to this person
- need a testimony that success is not by luck but achieved through faith, perseverance, and support from others
- need a roadmap to better mentor a person in need

"The Pact" is an amazing story of inspiration and motivation to get (primarily) black teens to see beyond their environment, current situation, and look ahead with a plan for tomorrow. "The Pact" also displays the need for adults to begin mentoring children before they reach their teens. The book concludes with the doctors providing the "how-to's" to make a pact work.

After years without picking up a novel by Dickens (memories of starchy classes at school), I decided to plunge into "Bleak House", a novel that had been sitting on my bookshelf for about ten years, waiting to be read. Although I found it heavy going at first, mainly because the style is so unfamiliar to modern readers, after about ten pages I was swept up and carried off, unable to put the hefty tome down until I had finished it. This book is a definite classic. The sheer scope of the tale, the wit of the satire (which could still be applied to many legal proceedings today) and the believable characters gripped me up until the magnificent conclusion. One particularly striking thing is the "cinematic" aspect of certain chapters as they switch between different angles, building up to a pitch that leaves the reader breathless. I can't recommend "Bleak House" too highly. And I won't wait so long before reading more Dickens novels.

This is the second book by Dickens I have read so far, but it will not be the last. "Bleak House" is long, tightly plotted, wonderfully descriptive, and full of memorable characters. Dickens has written a vast story centered on the Jarndyce inheritance, and masterly manages the switches between third person omniscient narrator and first person limited narrator. His main character Esther never quite convinces me of her all-around goodness, but the novel is so well-written that I just took Esther as she was described and ran along with the story. In this book a poor boy (Jo) will be literally chased from places of refuge and thus provide Dickens with one of his most powerful ways to indict a system that was particularly cruel to children. Mr. Skimpole, pretending not to be interested in money; Mr. Jarndyce, generous and good; Richard, stupid and blind; the memorable Dedlocks, and My Lady Dedlock's secret being uncovered by the sinister Mr. Tulkinghorn; Mrs. Jellyby and her telescopic philanthropy; the Ironmaster described in Chapter 28, presenting quite a different view of industralization than that shown by Dickens in his next work, "Hard Times." Here is a veritable cosmos of people, neighbors, friends, enemies, lovers, rivals, sinners, and saints, and Dickens proves himself a true master at describing their lives and the environment they dwell in. There are landmark chapters: Chapter One must be the best description of a dismal city under attack by dismal weather and tightly tied by perfectly dismal laws, where the Lord Chancellor sits eternally in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Chapter 32 has one of the eeriest scenes ever written, with suspicious smoke, greasy and reeking, as a prelude to a grisly discovery. Chapter 47 is when Jo cannot "move along" anymore. This Norton Critical is perhaps the best edition of "Bleak House" so far: the footnotes help a lot, and the two Introductions are key to understanding the Law system at the time the action takes place, plus Dickens' interest in this particular topic. To round everything off, read also the criticism of our contemporaries, as well as that of Dickens' time. "Bleak House" is a long, complex novel that opens a window for us to another world. It is never boring and, appearances to the contrary, is not bleak. Enjoy.

"There is little to be satisfied in reading this book"?? I couldn't disagree more. Bleak House left a profound impression on me, and was so utterly satisfying a reading experience that I wanted it never to end. I've read it twice over the years and look forward to reading it again. Definitely my favorite novel.

I don't know what the previous reviewer's demands are when reading a novel, but mine are these: the story must create its world - whatever and wherever that world might be - and make me BELIEVE it. If the novelist cannot create that world in my mind, and convince me of its truths, they've wasted my time (style doesn't matter - it can be clean and spare like Orwell or verbose like Dickens, because any style can work in the hands of someone who knows how to use it). Many novels fail this test, but Bleak House is not one of them.

Bleak House succeeds in creating a wonderfully dark and complex spider web of a world. On the surface it's unfamiliar: Victorian London and the court of Chancery - obviously no one alive today knows that world first hand. And yet as you read it you know it to be real: the deviousness, the longing, the secrets, the bureaucracy, the overblown egos, the unfairness of it all. Wait a minute... could that be because all those things still exist today?

But it's not all doom and gloom. It also has Dickens's many shades of humor: silliness, word play, comic dialogue, preposterous characters with mocking names, and of course a constant satirical edge. It also has anger and passion and tenderness.

I will grant one thing: if you don't love reading enough to get into the flow of Dickens's sentences, you'll probably feel like the previous reviewer that "...it goes on and on, in interminable detail and description...". It's a different dance rhythm folks, but well worth getting used to. If you have to, work your way up to it. Don't start with a biggie like Bleak House, start with one of his wonderful short pieces such as A Christmas Carol.

Dickens was a gifted storyteller and Bleak House is his masterpiece. If you love to dive into a book, read and enjoy this gem!

Got a really cool site up and running in three days. As an HTML returnie and a professional programmer I wanted a book with lots of code examples, pictures and very few words. This book goes down smooth in just a few days, gets right to the point and is oriented toward accomplishing something immediately. Not a comprehensive HTML reference rather one of the rare breed of technical books that doesn't make you want to blow your brains out with overkill. Excellent use of summary tables at the end of each chapter.

For web enthusiasts looking for a great beginning/intermediate book on HTML and webpage authoring, this is the book. I found this book not only easy to read, but also enjoyable. Using lots of exmaples and clear code, Dave discusses the internet and current technology, HTML 4 tags, cascading style sheets, java script, backgrounds, audio, dynamic HTML, registering and page maintenance, and much more. This is by far the best the best starters resource out there I have seen. Highly recommended.

Just about anyone can create a website with freeware/shareware HTML editors that require very little to zero knowledge of HTML. That is how I got started as well. But, take it from me, your creativity is severely limited when you design a website solely based on its appearance without ever learning how to code HTML by hand. For a while I had a difficult time to comprehend basic HTML scripting after purchasing stuffy books that solely contained a list of tags and explained by definition what each tag's purpose was. One day a friend suggested the book 'Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages', and from that day onward my HTML scripting headaches ended, and my creativity soared which resulted in great web sites. I definitely wish to recommend this book to novice and intermediate web designers alike.

Not a bad book, in fact good if you overlook some of the errors contained within (these may be publishing mistakes). The book will help you get a web page up, though to do it in a weekend you will have to dedicate that entire weekend's time to study and practise. I found Steve's approach a little too vague at times and too simple at others. Some of his examples are very clear and concise -- others left me scratching my head. And in at least two places there are outright errors as I mentioned above. I would recommend the book to others, but not to an idividual who is brand new to the internet. To get the most out of the material, you must have some familiarity with the world wide web. There are many good references to promising sites for building web pages listed in the back of the book. These and the CD with programs to get you started are worth the price paid. Good book for those who already have a working knowledge of HTML for a reference.

WOW! This book is awesome! Before reading it I had a minimal knowledge of HTML and web page design. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone that wants the know-how to make their own web site/page. Want to see what it did for me? Visit my first web site at geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/8525 . It did take me longer than a week, but only because I wanted to plan out a multi-page site. A very easy book full of great info, and the CD has tons of great programs, tutorials, graphics, help, et cetera. Learn everything you need to know with this book! Happy webbing!

I'll give this book a perfect 10, why? because the book kept the promise of it's title and taught me to create my first web page in a weekend. This a well written easy to understand book, that is loaded with tons of examples!(the best way to learn anything)If you've been surfin the net for a while now, and are ready to take the plunge into learning HTML, then I highly recommend this book to get you started. You will quickly learn all the essentials of HTML on a step by step basis. And by the end you will be ready to upload your first web page. Other books assume you already know too much and use hard to understand terms. Not this one! What are you waiting for? The time to learn HTML is now