This book covers Software Project Management broadly with a lot of good information for both the new project manager as well as the old hand. The material is presented as a comprehensive overview rather than a detailed instruction. By itself the book does not go deeply enough into any of the areas to provide a novice with enough useful information so it's a good book to use in conjunction with books providing more detail.

Despite its lack of detail, the book presents many important points - the importance of the human equation, analysis/organization tools such as Tony Buzan's MindMap, having a Management Information Center, and using standards without having a programmer's revolt. There is only passing mention of key issues such as scope creep, the tendency of management to try to throw more personnel at a project in trouble, needing to build testing into the initial design process, and the pro's and con's of the various development methods (waterfall, spiral, etc.). A number of references are quoted, including many IEEE documents (IEEE is the publisher) plus books by Gerald Weinberg, Capers Jones, Tom Demarco, and other recognized gurus - which make good adjuncts to this handbook.

Phillips perpetuates one of my pet peeves, the issue of including the top ten risks in the risk assessment document. What if there are only 7 risks which seem to be significant? What if there are 12? Granted, it would be unwieldy to track & evaluate dozens of risks routinely, but it doesn't make sense to suggest that exactly 10 be tracked.

The discussions of Configuration Management are quite lengthy and in a bit more detail than other topics covered.

Although the book is fairly short at 500 pages and is easy reading, there is a substantial amount of information covered. The 5 star rating is for the breadth of information covered, with the caveat that other references would be needed by those unfamiliar with the concepts presented.

Don't confuse the ease of reading this excellent book with the depth and power of the information within it. Being involved in software project management myself, I related to the ideas the author expressed and feel I have learned much from reading the book. Other project managers in my company are now reading this book and share similar opinions.

The book contains good explanations of various techniques for formalising projects. It also contains a number of case study experiences which are very apt.

I recommend this book to project managers of all levels and to managers of software companies.

Unlike most text books, it is a very easy to read book allowing one to read it from cover to cover. The book is an excellent source for novice project managers who need a guide to the many aspects that come with the job. Personally I refer to it often for suggestions on which documents I should produce or what actions to take while managing a project.

Let's get something straight right now - anyone who calls Flap Tucker a "Zen Private Eye" wasn't paying attention. First, Flap practices Taoism, not Zen. Second,Flap prefers to call himself a "finder of lost items" as opposed to a private investigator. Other than that, the praise is all warranted.

As you read, you may think that you are reading a fantasy or magical realist novel. Depoy is the kind of writer who sees the magic in everyday situations and brings it to life. His dialog is witty, snappy and thoughtful. All of characters, save Dalliance Oglethorpe, are interesting and twisted in their own way, but in a way that is consistent with Flap's world. Surprisingly, Dalliance is the weakest character, possibly because Depoy insists that it is she around whom Flap's world revolves, so the author was unable to see her as a person instead of an icon.

The suspense builds nicely, coming from a mixture of terrestrial violence and magical supposition (though there is no magic here outside of Flap Tucker's head). The intertwined plots involving a missing woman and the newly-appointed Panchen Llama is interesting and tasty.

I bought this book because I recently moved to Atlanta and like to explore my surroundings via books. I was not disappointed here. I was dragged in, entertained, and left begging for more.

I really enjoyed EASY and EASY AS ONE, TWO, THREE, so was anxious to get my hands on the next in the Flap Tucker series. I can't help but compare these mysteries to Lawrence Block's, a favorite of mine in the "detective with a twist" genre. While Bernie Rhodenbarr (Block's protagonist) is a bookselling burglar, DePoy's Flap Tucker is a Zen detective who gets crimesolving visions. Much like Bernie Rhodenbarr, Flap Tucker is smart, funny, likeable, and able to solve murders with one chakra behind his back. The Georgia settings add a lot to the pleasure of these books. I understand TOO EASY was nominated for a Shamus. Should've won...looking forward to DANCING MADE EASY, the next in this great series.

Flap Tucker, Phillip Depoy's alternative and cool private detective has his second romp. Making use of a well-crafted plot, Depoy takes us on another great adventure with Flap and Dalliance. Set in Depoy's home state of Georgia, the novel gives a ramblin' good time with Flap and friends including some delightful insights into the cultural dynamics of the state of Georgia. Highly recommended!

Beautiful pictures, touching and moving story. About the restoration of the wolves.

Beautiful pictures illustrates the many different wolves that were restored to yellowstone (#10, #9etc...). Illustrates the effort the yellowstone had to put in to restore the wolf to its natural habitat. Very interesting to the average wolf lover and those who are interested in what happened in the 1995 restoration of the wolves to yellowstoen.

This book brings you right into the experience of bringing the wolves back to Yellowstone where they belong! Find out the behind the scenes activity that brought the sight and sound of the wolf back after an absence of over 60 years. You'll never be the same after reading this. Excellent!!

This is a great book in the category of muscle-cars and one of the best offered by Amazon.com,however its not recommended for todays youth who werent around when these great cars ruled the roads.To enjoy this book,you need to be at least in your mid to late thirties.This book is not intended for todays teens or early twenties,theyre only permitted to enthuse about todays cars.

This is a great book for the muscle-car lover.Its comprehensive,offers accurate and complete technical specs and great photos of some of the hottest american cars ever produced.This book is recommended only for men 45 years old or older,its not appropriate for these young guys that werent even around when these cars were conceived and built!

I am a muscle car lover through and through and this book has all the info a true muscle car guru could ever hope to find. The pictures are well done and I liked the overall style of the book. I hope to find more like it using amazon.com!

When reporter Colin Lyons learns that his beloved adoptive father suffered a stroke, he takes a leave of absence from his South American assignment to return to his Massachusetts hometown to run Joe's labor of love, Ashford Times. However, Colin learns that his mentor assigned his second wife to run the newspaper. She has converted the focus into fluff while the paper is now losing money. Colin plans to eliminate the bubbles by bringing serious news back as the prime theme of the paper and consequently out of the red.

Colin realizes that he finds one of the new hires, advice columnist Rina Lowell, SIMPLY SEXY. Though he tries to avoid her, she turns the heat up, as she wants her boss by her side permanently. He cannot resist her and decides a holiday fling is just the thing, but as he falls in love he wonders how she will react to his New Year's Resolution to fire the frivolous, which includes her.

Like Rina's column, SIMPLY SEXY is mostly fluff, but anyone looking for an amusing good time will join this reviewer and declare so what. Instead, the audience receives a humorous tale with some serious undertones involving coping with loss and the state of small town newspapers. The key to this novel, as with the previous "Simply" tales (being reprinted starting in April), is the two delightful protagonists, who struggle between professional desires, fears of commitment, and a growing love for one another. Readers will enjoy Carly Phillips' heated holiday romance that contains much merriment with just the right dab of solemnity.

Harriet Klausner

I enjoyed this book immensly. I got so involved by the end of the book that I almost forgot what the beginning was like. Instant red-hot attractions are always fun to read about, and they actually have real issues that they learn to deal with. Hurray for depth of character.

You have done it again, Carly. I forever look forward to your Harlequin Temptation as well as Harlequin Blaze books. How you come up with those steamy scenes and put them into words to describe them so others can actually relate is beyond me! This book kept me on the edge of my seat as well as hot to where I couldn't put it down from start to finish! Thanks!

Excellent book if you care to maintain a good relationship. The chapter on Communication is especially good and suggestion to improve how to talk with your mate helped me a lot.

I found that this book to be a very realistic explanation of both positive and negative instinctual behaviors people exhibit in relationships. It not only helps you identify the weaknesses in your relationship, but it helps you identify the your own personal hangups to facilitate you in your own self discovery if you are serious about changing your own behaviors to have a healthy, loving, and fulfilling realtionship.

This book caught my attention! Find out if you are controlling or dependant. Are you trying to chase your partner? Are you wondering why he/she is pushing you away? If so, then the problem could be YOU! You need to be happy w/yourself before you can get love from someone else! This book covers all the bases. My mate wanted more freedom. Well, I tried to control my mate. Saying "I love you" too soon can scare anyone away! I had to give my partner space! But, you can only give your partner space if, and only if, you feel confident in yourself! If you need balance in your relationship, then this book is for you!

This is a wonderful book which has covers the current issue of declining amphibian populations well in regards to the pet trade, habitat loss and fragmentation, and exotic species as well as specific species such as the golden toad and california's red-legged frog. Its an adventure as well as a source of information. The only reservation I had was that it didn't cover chemicals (pesticides) or frog deformities as issues towards species loss.

This reads like a novel, but the subject is non-fiction: the disappearance of frogs from our planet, what it means, and what we must do about it. Recommended to all adults and thinking teen-agers who are interested in the planet.

This is a facinating and gripping tale about an animal that is simple, slimey, and generally not well thought of by humans. Our desensitivity to the legitimate role in our world of reptiles and amphibians (from the bible to the Sound of Music) has left them without an advocate when they need it most. Kathryn Phillips explains why their loss is anything but insignificant.

In the old days, coal miners would take a canary into the mines with them and listen to it sing all day. If the canary stopped singing and fell over dead, the miners didn't stop to wonder why or grieve its passing, they got the heck out of the mine as fast as they could. That was the very reason they took the canary in with them. Frogs are the canaries on this earth. But here on earth, we don't have the easy option of just getting the heck out of here as fast as we can. Kathryn Phillips tells you why with the power of a fiction writer but does it as only a professional journalist could with clarity, accuracy and completeness.

Whoever called this a "sleeper" is quite right. It's a fast read -- slyly funny and quietly frightening. You'll remember you read it, and that's about the best compliment for a book I can think of. I took one star off because it isn't perfect, but then few books are.

I read this book when it first came out, enjoyed it immensely. I was certain it would be a moderate "hit" in no time. But I tried to track it down a few years later and couldn't find it anywhere. Hope you're luckier than I.

If you read Might magazine, you're familiar with Glasgow Phillips' essays on subjects including the semiotics of tracksuits. Based on the strength of his nonfiction writing, and from some obscure mention of this, his first novel, I sought it out.

Was it ever worth it. Tuscaloosa is a finely crafted, immersive piece of writing. It's a coming of age story, but it's a little twisted, and I couldn't stop reading. I don't have the words to tell you why you ought to read it, but if you care about good writing you ought to read it. It's worth the extra effort.

I was very surprised when I read this book after picking it up at a used bookstore....extremely well written!

This is a great read...don't miss it.

This is a striking and visually stimulating product. Very smartly written, full of thought provoking issues, and drawn/photographed to the best of 1998's technology. The story follows a Victorian woman's journey to the "orient" and all the orient's mysteries and sterotypes. The protagonist must shed her "veils" in order to find her true calling and desires. For years, woman are preceived in certain ways and must uphold their appearance and thoughts in a certain way to uphold their status. Well, Veils does the opposite. It allows the protagonist the daring decision to liberate her feminity and desires and in the process, sheds all her outer burdens. Truely literary and deep. Deals with the orient, feminism, and of course male domination on the female body. The art? WEll, a blend of hand art and photography makes this stunning and beautiful. The reason for only four stars is because I felt this book could've been expanded with more twists. I felt some scenes were longer than necessary and at times I wanted the plot to go faster. That's what Comic Books are about, right? But overall, this is stunning and deep. Expect a good read. Not a wham bang type of comic.

Graphic novel is the name given now to beautiful full length "comics" which come in hardback or trade paperback size. What's truly unusual about this one is that it is not male-oriented. This one was meant for a female audience! The only other graphic novel I've read that does the same is Gaiman and McKean's "Black Orchid". "Veils" totally succeeds as both a story and an art work and you can't ask any more of a "comic book" than that. The art work is done by 2 different artists since 2 different media are used: actual hand drawings/paintings and computer-enhanced photography. Using both together was a brilliant idea. This story of a Victorian English woman, fleeing her abusive English husband into a Middle Eastern harem, is quite tantalizing. None of the names are familiar to me of the people who collaborated on this book but I certainly hope they all plan to work together again and soon!

like nothing you've ever seen

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and will no doubt go back to it again and again. The photos of both historic and modern weavings are gorgeous, and I especially appreciated the detailed description (and photos) of the laborious process of washing, carding, spinning, and dyeing the wool before weaving can begin. The photo of a man rinsing cochineal-dyed skeins in a stream is especially evocative, showing clouds of the red dye blooming in blue water. My only complaint is that the author occassionally seems as if she's selling the town and its inhabitants in the same way she sells their crafts. I think we need to ban the word "magical" from all descriptions of indigenous/low tech comunities until we acknowledge the "magic" of our voodoo market economy and the hard materialism present in even idyllic-seeming villages. But that's a relatively minor flaw in a very good book.

This book is well-written as well as thoughtfully and lavishly illustrated, giving one a true insight into the famous Zapotec weavers of this lovely and traditional Oaxacan community. Zapotec precolumbian traditions are mentioned, and the illustrations show many steps in creating dies, yarns and weavings ranging from the traditionally inspired to the most avant garde, from natural dies to the use of anilines and naturally colored churro wools.

As one who has spent time learning to appreciate the arts of weaving and embroidery from weavers through Mexico and Guatemala, including a hospitable and skilled family in Teotitlán, I heartily recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the topic covered.

This is an excellent book with gorgeous photos of Zapotec rugs and weavings. I recently returned from a trip to Oaxaca where I had the opportunity to visit the village of Teotitlan and purchase some rugs from one of the families featured in the book. I just wish I had read the book before I went so that I could appreciate the beautiful examples that I saw even more. Besides the information on the laborious process of making the rugs, the book tells the differences and qualities that make some "works of art" and some imitations. And in telling the story of the weavings, the friendliness and pride of the weaving families must be told. I will treasure the book as well as my memories of the village of Teotitlan and her people.