Well, the writing is passable, the plot has a few slightly interesting twists and I like the way Nancy is helping others in this book, but that's about all you can say for it. Nancy jumped to conclusions like a biased amateur instead of the teen detective extroadinaire she is supposed to be. The characters were all one dimensional: George was always athletic, Bess was always slightly overweight and trailing after boys, Dino was a cute little kid who wanted to be a detective...Maria had a shadow of a nicer side, but it was still predictable...
Don't waste your time with this book; read the originals instead.

This book was soooooooo good! I finished it within the 2nd hour that I started reading it! I just couldn't put it down!!! All Nancy Drew mystery books are good so it doesn't matter which one you get!

Cover all basic topics.But also miss some advance tip

After reading many reviews in amazon I first bought those sybex books and then que books. One day when walking in a barnes & noble books store, I saw this book and bought it. I still haven't read the whole book but I can tell having read 1/4th of the book that this is a very comprehensive book written very clearly. This book is only for those serious minded person. By "serious minded". I only mean that if you want to know more in-depth knowledge, then this is the one. This book is more rigourous than any other books that I have seen. I really feel bad for Mr. Hallberg and Ms. Ivens because this book is not number one book in the market. In my opinion, this book should be number one for this material. I was surprised why there was only one review for such an excellent book! Well, as always the world is not always fair.

People, please try this book and you will see what I mean.

This book was a classic when published in 1988. This edition is a re-issue with a new publisher without a single word revised. A lot has changed in the national security landscape in the last fourteen years. Indeed, Snow has subsequently published four iterations of National Security with another publisher. Don't spend the money for this "new" edition!

This book was a classic in its field when the Air Force published it in the mid 1980s. Now, it has been republished in its original form with a 2002 imprint by Pacific. A lot has changed in the world of strategy in the intervening period: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the corresponding end of the Cold War, a decade of peacekeeping missions, and now the war on terrorism.

This is simply the least inspiring book on AI that I have seen. The title is a misnomer (there is very little about mechanism), most of the ideas are not new, and his main points are that minds are computational machines and that people will make intelligent machines at some point. To quote his second to last page, "Those who worry about long-term phenomena such as the sun using up all its fuel and the ability of the human race to genetically reengineer itself might want to know exactly what time scale I have in mind for the creation of truly intelligent robots. The answer is that I don't have one. I doubt that anything like intelligent robots will exist in my lifetime, but I'm not that young and my health isn't that good." Poor guy. Perhaps he wanted to spit out his ideas before dieing, but they are poorly organized, not very well developed, and add very little to an understanding of AI that couldn't be gained from Dennet (who I disagree with most of the time, but still think is brilliant and is much more provocative) or a text on AI. OK, some of his ideas on computation are interesting. Be very skeptical of a book that starts talking about God as though... well let me give another quote: "I find the world to be morally incomprehensible without being able to adopt God's view of it, and physically inexplicable unless there is something outside of it that explains why it exists... The only way to reconcile God's silence with his existence is to assume that he poured himself into the world when he created it..." He is writing this in his Consequences part of the book. This stance, which is maintained throughout the book, is one of incredible hubris (as though he can adopt God's view of the world, as though God exists, as though the Western religious stance is the correct stance on spirituality), and for those interested in learning about mind and mechanism, keep looking.

Drew McDermott's book draws on everything from Nietzche to the latest work in robotics to give us a startingly creative theory of how the purely mechanical brain gives rise to a conscious mind that has an experience of itself as a spiritual being. Once he states his prime insight, it seems so simple and straightforward that it's hard to remember what a revolutionary idea he is putting forward. His thoughts about God and the possibility of eternal life for the "soul" in a mechanical universe are provocative. His use of examples always works to make his complex ideas clearer. A very important book which takes a lot of fear out of the idea that human thought and feeling is a mechanical process.

I just recently bought this book for my intro to Pysch class. It is laid out well, is very readable, and has lots of graphics. Needless to say that makes it a true easily digestible introductory text with limited information on each topic. Buyers beware that friends of Jung will find no friends here. He is never to my knowledge mentioned in the text and is certainly not in any of the indexes. It is oriented to a "scientifically provable" approach to psychology and will be an excellent text for those who share this viewpoint.

I recently took an introductory psychology course, and this was the assigned text. I can say without hesitation that this is one of the most readable textbooks, in any subject, I've ever seen. Westen has a gift for explaining complex concepts in a very clear, understandable way. The relevent antecdotes and occasional wry humor work to make this book all the more enjoyable to read. I would recommend this book to anyone taking an introductory psych class, or anyone who just wants to learn the basics of psychology.

I have heard some bad things said about The Nancy Drew Files.I honestly have to say some of the stories are better than the Mystery Stories.Rich and Dangerous is a typical Nancy Drew story.The only thing i dont like about this series is Nancy worring about fashion.She didnt make it a hassle in the original series.At least Bess and George are here in this to pick up the slack were the story tends to drag on.

In "Rich and Dangerous" (case #25 in The Nancy Drew Files series), 18-year-old Nancy Drew is spending the weekend in New York City with her lawyer father. While he's busy with an annual Interpol convention, Nancy is getting acquainted with her rich older neighbor, Sarah Amberly, who shares the penthouse floor with them in the Plaza Hotel. For the short time that she knows Sarah, Nancy is worried about the old woman's health. And she has good reason to be, because shortly after they meet, Sarah dies in her suite from an overdose of her heart medicine. At first, Sarah's death is considered a suicide, but when her expensive jewelry collection disappears shortly after her death, the hotel detective (Joe Ritter) considers it murder--and Nancy Drew the main suspect since she was in the suite when Sarah died. Well, of course Nancy didn't kill Sarah Amberly, so she--along with the help of her two friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, who drop in for a short visit--decide to uncover this mystery themselves. Here's their list of possible suspects: Maximilian, the mysterious waiter who offers Nancy bits of gossip about Sarah's odd family, yet ominously warns her not to interfere so much; Alison Kale, Sarah's poor, mentally unstable younger sister who may be crazy enough to kill her sibling out of jealousy and rage; Jack Kale, Sarah's nephew who has a major problem with gambling and stealing and may have killed his aunt for the money; Pieter van Druten, Sarah's rich fiancé who may have an ulterior reason for marrying her; and Madame Rosa, Sarah's tarot card reader who foretells of death, possibly as a way to frighten the old woman to death.

"Rich and Dangerous" was a decent enough Nancy Drew mystery, but I thought the whole secret double-identity of the killer was a little too ridiculous and complicated. Still, this book is worth reading if you're a big fan of The Nancy Drew Files series.

Author William Drew interviewed 10 silent film actresses about their careers and their memories of working in the industry. Some like Colleen Moore were huge stars; others were featured actresses that worked steadily through the era. While their stories are not quite as in-depth as Kevin Brownlow's THE PARADE'S GONE BY, Mr. Drew conducted his interviews about 20 years later than Mr. Brownlow and his actresses memories may not have been as sharp. Most of them come across as very intelligent. What is surprising is that most of them had no idea of what they were doing when they first started acting, but they were seasoned professionals when they retired. Only Madge Bellamy, the first subject comes across as a little shallow. If you are a silent film fan and you read this book, you will definitely want to see some films by Colleen Moore, Lois Wilson, Esther Ralston and others. Highly recommended.

This is a book on several actresses who achieved fame in the silent era. Of the bunch, Colleen Moore and Blanche Sweet were the only ones who were superstars, but most of the others were popular with the public then: Esther Ralston, Madge Bellamy, Laura La Plante, May McAvoy, Patsy Ruth Miller, Leatrice Joy, etc. The photos are extremely rare and the design of the book is quite lovely. Each actress gets a chapter, profiling her career and what she her life at the time of the interview (sadly, the last survivor, Laura La Plante, passed away in 1996). The best chapters are the ones with stars who are talkative: the sharply intelligent Bellamy, the vivacious Joy who seems to be her own greatest fan, etc. The more quiet stars like Miss La Plante don't offer much info and the author's writing ability does not seem strong enough to make those chapters as lively. Mr. Drew should count himself fortunate to have known such women. Certainly they all seem very gracious and were very generous with their time to a somewhat unknown author. I was somewhat dissapointed by the fact that the author failed to note which of the ladies had already passed away when the book was first published (1989) one is led to believe all of them were still alive and well. Still, a must for any silent movie lover.

If you know anything about networks, protocols or general CompTIA Net+ knowledge, don't waste your time. This book just explains what a web server does and defines the different ways it does it. My suggestion would be to go for the NET+ books, they are bigger but have more depth of information. I rankd it a 3 because I was hoping it would explain more of how to set up a web server.

This book is really the best technical "speed read" I've ever enjoyed. A vast array of topics are considered, yet no section is longer than six pages. Each section ends with questions and reflective exercises that give the book a perfect balance for mental stretching. As a curriculum developer, one of the perks is that the book is loaded with ideas I can use when presenting other types of technical materials in my own course development. If you're an intermediate level or novice web professional, you will find something in this book about servers that you previously did not know.

I was so jazzed about how fast I blew through the text (under 400 pages -- 3 mornings before leaving for work) that I laid out money for "Web Servers, Security, & Maintenance" from the "Foundation" series.

This entire series from Prentice Hall will expand your understanding of Client/Server networks, web applications, and HTTP security. It gets an A+.

An excellent treatise on some important work in the theory of learning in games. Fudenberg and Levine provide a good coverage of standard myopic play dynamics with a special emphasis on ficticious play and replicator dynamics. I particularly liked the sections going through the Kandori, Mailath and Rob (1993) model as well as Young (1993) on the evolution of convention.

The treatments of dynamic systems analysis, elementary game theory, stochastic approximation theory, etc., are necessarily short. The appendices do not suffice for a reader without a reasonable background.

Nonetheless an essential read for anybody doing serious work in learning, or wanting to know what all the fuss is about.

During the work on my master thesis ("Learning in strategic games") i bought several books about the topic. This is the one of them. Chapters 1 and 2 (Introduction, Fictitious Play) are really good introduction into the subject. The following chapters evolve the theory further giving some good ideas for practical implementation (I was writing a C program which had to be able to play the game and to learn). I would recommend this book to anyone interested in relatively new field - Learning in games.

[....] I liked this book but didn't love it. It was a little predictable as compared to the others in the series.

If you like camps you will like this book. It is one of those books that will keep you up a night reading. The "mystery" is not too hard for the recommended age group, but not too childish for an older child to read.