I enjoyed the plot of the book and the excitement of the expedition down the Colorado River. However, it was very long on stereotypical characterizations and situations ... hence the lower rating.

I'm the first to review this book. Hope this will be helpful to would be buyers.
This book is not very interesting for an advanced SF reader. Why?
Writers featured in this book are Asimov, Bester, Bradbury, Clarke and Norton. Good and popular writers, but their work is still very easy to come by. Want stories of Asimov? Buy his two-volume collection. Same for Bradbury, who has a very nice one-volume collection, and for Clarke and Bester. The stories in this anthology will tell you that these writers deserve to have a single-author collection on your bookshelves. Why buy stories you already own?
For starters then. Buy this book. Some stories in here are classics, others are mere filler. They point out to you their writers' vision. Still, it's your decision. The truth: There are better anthologies out there.
Whatever your decision, do check out the first item in this series. It's somewhat better.
I appreciate this series. A good Idea. You won't throw your money away.

All i can say about this book is that it is very good, but there are mistakes about the history of some items, for example pages 370-371 about a Dutch manuscript about the sword 'excalibur', it say's it comes from Holland, while it really came from France. But the rest is really cool

Heinrich Vossler, a young Wurttemberg cavalry officer, has left a gripping tale of Napoleon's campaigns of 1812 and 1813 as well as an account of life as an allied POW. His description of the Russian catastrophe is particularly noteworthy - a true reminder of the horrors of war. Vossler also took time to observe the countryside through which he traveled and their inhabitants (good & bad), leaving behind some wry comments. Recommended for students of the Russian campaign and for those researching Napoleon's German contingents. My copy is from the Folio Society, grimly adorned with lithographs by Faber du Faur.

The introductory chapter on the history of musical theatre from ancient Greece to the 20th century is outstanding. I've never read any account that was better or more thorough. Unfortunately, that's the only strong part of the book. The rest of it is dull to read and contains many factual errors. Still, I'd recommend borrowing it from the library just to read the intro.

This book feels more like a collection of unrelated magazine articles than a book. A lot of the information is repeated (Funny Girl & Gypsy had the best overtures, pit bands are good, etc) and especially towards the end, the author goes from historian to strident critic.

I found this book to be much more interesting than other histories out there on Musical Theatre. There are some errors, and I disagree with the idea that the American Musical ended with Chorus Line, but all in all I found the book to be very entertaining.

I am a high school student with no previous interest in the subject of unification in physics until this book. It was written plainly and so it was easy to read, but it was also too concise. The only problem was that, and the fact superstrings are discussed towards the end of the book. Also, probably from being new to the subject, I did not see why he had to describe group theory, it would have been better if he explained what the importance of group theory was and why he put it in the book. I do not think the book is horrible, but many better books exist as an introduction to unification. Search for a Supertheory by Barry Parker is better in that it doesn't suffer from conciseness. Particle Garden by Gordon Kane actually describes the particles in an understandable manner, rather than just listing particle after particle with little explanation as in this book. Too many questions remained to someone like me, new to the subject after reading this. Unless you already are familiar with the subject and want a quick review, this book is not worth the money.

If you are looking for more than " Oh, Golly" physics with some real mathematics, then this will be disappointing, but if you like Richard Feynman type informative lectures that name the names and give an understandable overview, then this is a well written book with history and facts and references. I got is as a gift from a friend who was trying to be of help! It was more help than some of my Google searches on the Internet!

Popular books on quantum theory are like cheap toilet paper, they fall apart easily. Gribbin's latest book is a triumph for the quantum wanabees who think they know some of the basic concepts, but in reality can only recite what they've read. Gribbin has a way of giving the reader an insight into what can only be properly understood mathematically. This book was written for those who don't know the math, but wish they did. The only thing "cheap" about this book is the price. Excellent!

I was disappointed in "Grand Finishes". A great review in the L.A. Times led me to purchase it sight-unseen. It arrived and I was surprised to see very few photos and prety much no ideas for design. Far from grand... There is some good basic info on tools and terminology, to be sure, but "step-by-step" seems a stretch. The installation of wainscoating, a large and potentially complicated project, is covered in just a few pages with mostly sketches and small black and white photos. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone looking for a guide on an upcoming molding project.

I know very little about working with wood or the tools needed and GRAND FINISHES FOR CARPENTRY was a perfect choice for me. It didn't insult my intelligence and was never condescending yet explained everything so clearly. I have two other molding books but this one pointed out several of the problems I might have encountered, whereas the others glossed over them. Though not a lot of pictures I thought there were just enough for me to accomplish creating and installing my own wainscoting in our diningroom. My wife even helped, and we both enjoyed the whole process.

I was surprised to read the earlier negative reviews. I found the instruction thorough and very clear: I've put in base molding before but got a lot out of the crown installation step-by-steps. The book's VOICE OF EXPERIENCES had many helpful hints that added a little levity to my projects but also pointed out several pitfalls I might not have ordinarilly known about. This is the third book of Nikitas's that I've purchased and I use them ("GRAND FINISHES FOR WALLS AND FLOORS" and "GRAND FINISHES FOR TILE") religiously as reference books. Definitely a keeper.

This effort is one of the most disappointment among the 100 or so baseball history titles that I have read in the past half-dozen years. The book is poorly edited and filled with literally hundreds of typographical errors. (Also the footnotes section at the end of the hardcover edition is simply eliminated from the end of the paperback, without corresponding adjustments in the text!) This factor is especially disappointing when it comes to the butchered names of dozens of Latin ballplayers. There are also numerous historical inaccuracies here. Hispaniola is not an island to the west of Cuba. Jackie Robinson was not called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers "not long after the 1947 began." Aluminum bats are not made in Cuba by the Batos company. And such errors go on and on. This book is a major disappointment when it comes to historical historical research.

A historical synopsis of what is now the official garden of talent for the Major Leagues; Latin America.

Ignites the importance of the Spanish American War - in baseball anyway.

This is the worst book on programming I've ever bought. Even though the author does tell the reader that this book isn't intended as a "teach yourself"-book one expects a book on programming to be somehow divided into well defined areas, each showing a part of the whole idea. This book switches from reference style to programming-by-example style all mixed up with a couple of bad flow charts. I regret buying it and advise others from doing it.

There are several places in the language description (for example, the rules on static method overriding and inner classes) where this book is either vague, misleading, or occasionally flat-out wrong. "Java Language Reference" might provide a nice introduction to the language's syntax, but it does not make a good Java language reference.

I'm a little surprised by the other reviews. I have found over the last year this to be an authorative source for the Java Language Specification. I go to other books when I want to know about the various Java packages but this is the one I got to when I want to know about the Java langauge semantics and syntax.

This was the most irritatingly written novel I've ever read. Not being the type to easily give up on a book, I decided to give it 100 pages to see if it improved; I gave up on page 44, but before I did I scanned pages further along to make absolutley sure. Now, some would argue that I hadn't give the book enough time to develop, but to be frank, the writing was so bad, I had to stop for the sake of my sanity. I was going to put the book up for sale on Amazon.com, but there appears to be a glut of used copies of this book. I wonder how many others felt the way I did.

This book was terrible. I couldn't finish it. The dialoge was sophomoric. There wasnt any character development. A complete waste of time.

One can only hope the the Last Canyon is Mr. Vernon's last book. Flat characters; flat imagery; sophomoric dialogue; silly, forced, disconnected scenes: the genuis here is that one truly celebrates the end of Powell's journey becasue it also coincides with the end of Mr. Vernon's prose. One wishes Mr. Powell's journey had ended 300 hundred pages sooner.