I guess I'd just expected the CD-ROM to cover everything. It did covert enough to give the going.

This was my second 3D Studio max book. Buying it then was a mistake. There are many introductory books out there and this is one of the best but the problem is that the followup to this book; Inside 3DSMax vol 2, has everything vol 1 does and more. Get it if you are just starting out, and then I hope you are not scared of big books because this is where you start off, and start off well. If you already know your way around Max and just want to know advanced stuff like material manipulation and smoother models, get volume 2.

Many books on the market will give you step by step instructions how how to create a scene, or create certain effects. Although this is sometimes handy, it doesn't easially allow the user to incorperate the skills they learned into their own work.

Inside 3D Studio Max shows you the concepts behind how the program works, and allows you to apply these concepts, and skills to your own work, rather than a preformatted tutorial. It is this fact, however, that makes the book not extremely useful for modelers who are new to the program. This book often speaks of the manual which ships with 3DS Max, and the writer made it clear that this was not yet ANOTHER MANUAL. Inside 3D Studio Max explores how to expand your ability.

If you have no prior modeling practice, read the manual which ships with Max, then buy this book. If you do that, you will appreciate what is taught in this massive book.

This is an overall GREAT book, and it has really helped me to become a much better 3D artist.

Inside 3DStudio MAX At last!The book we all waited for.Inside 3DStudio MAX,writtten by Steven Elliot & Phillip Miller;authors of Inside 3DStudio Release 3 & 4.Some said that Inside series is better than the manuals.Well,to tell you the truth,they are quite right. The book is very well structured.It has 29 chapters,starting from explaining the core concepts of MAX,and ending in Network Rendering.Every chapter has its introduction and summary,that's very good 'cause you know what's the chapter about and the summary reminds you the most importants parts. It is not a book that throws you some tutorials only.On the contrary,the writers pay attention to general knowledge an animator must have.Mixing colors and light,story boarding,etc.. Every button is explained thouroughly in the book.It teaches you the best way to model and animate efficiently every model you can think of. Of course,it has some drawbacks.Material editor,Video Post,Space Warps & Particles are not explained in depth.Although there is a solution to that(in February 2 more Volumes will be published:Inside3DStudio MAX Volume II:Advanced Modelling & Material Editor,Volume III:Animation & Character Studio),who wants to buy 2 more books that costs 110$ additionally?(Answear:Me..:P).Another drawback is that the book has color photos only in the chapters that refer to Material Editor(although some will say that's no big deal).And the CD that is included with the book has 200mb of textures.O.k ,where's the drawback?:) Only a few of them are useful.90% of them are very artistic and extend beyond the needs of traditional animators.I think that whoever makes the textures(by the way Tim Forcade,who included textures in 3DStudio 4 Hollywood & Gaming Effects & Indide 3DStudio 4),should have in mind that animators need practical textures like wood,metals and stuff and not abstract paintings.... Inside is for the novice and for the experienced animator,and it is by far the No.1 if you want to master MAX. "Inside 3D Studio MAX should be a part of every serious animator's library"(Larry Crume,Vice President,Autodesk and General MAnager,Kinetix)

This novel's subtitle describes one part of the story, the title another. From the introduction, this is Mary Higgins Clark's first published novel, originally titled "Aspire to the Heavens." It tells the story of the love she feels she discovered between George and Martha Washington. However, his love for Mount Vernon was just as powerful, and very real.

Told in small chapters that run from the end of his presidency to the past when he first met Martha, the story skips many of the important events in Washington's career. It does tell of some of the things we do know about his relationship with Martha. He worried about her spoiling her children. He loved Jacky and Patsy very much, and the latter did die in his arms. And he and Martha (also called Patsy) raised Jacky's youngest two children as their own. Since Martha burned all but a very few examples of their correspondence, not much else can be known for certain of their feelings for one another.

The lack of substance makes this small book unsatisfying, although it's a pleasant read. In places it evokes the times and how people lived. For a more in-depth fictional story of the lives of these two, readers may want to try "Washington's Lady" by Elswyth Thane. It can be difficult to find, but is worth the effort. She too depicts their relationship based on love and respect, but in much greater depth.

I don't normally read Mary Higgins Clark's books, but I decided to give this one a try. It was a fast and interesting read, and I enjoyed it very much.

This book was first written in 1969, and is being republished for the first time. It's a book that flashes between George Washington leaving the Presidency in 1797, and his memories of his life, from the beginning, then to when he met Martha ("Patsy") Custis. He grows fonder and fonder of Patsy, and when she is widowed with two young children to raise, he realizes that he really does love her, and marries her. We also read of the trials and tribulations of their life together, and of Washington's many accomplishments and defeats. I'm not sure how historically accurate this book really is, but I enjoyed it. Clark makes the people come alive, and we really do care about George and Patsy. A nice surprize from a book that I didn't think I'd like!

I've always enjoyed Mary Higgins Clark's mysteries and this historical love story has proven to me that Ms. Clark is more than a great mistress of suspense - she is quite capable of entertaining in other genres as well!

This charming historical novel was actually the author's first novel, originally published in 1968 under the title "Aspire to the Heavens". It was re-released in 2002 and I can't think of a more appropriate time to do so!

With the tragic attacks on our nation on September 11, 2001, it is wonderful to read this highly-readable, well-researched novel about George Washington - the man who helped to give us the freedoms we so enjoy today! As Washington passes the presidential torch onto John Adams and returns to his beloved Mount Vernon, both he and his wife Martha (aka Patsy)flashback to their younger years. We're so used to stodgy accounts of Washington's military victories and political accomplishments that it was a pleasure to read a well-crafted story about Washington as a man and a husband.

This is a short novel and a fast-read so it's a great beach or airplane book. I would love to see it made into a television movie, perhaps to be aired on George Washington's birthday!

Gordon Conway presents to us a problem: an unacceptably large number in absolute terms suffers from staggering levels of poverty, malnutrition, and hunger. He acknowledges that there is enough food in the world to meet aggregate demand, and he indicates that he is not Malthusian or even Neo-Malthusian. The main problem, and theme of his book, is that certain high-population, low-income areas lack the purchasing power and access to technology and capital necessary to support a "doubly green revolution" to bring the successes of agricultural technology to all peoples. His normative analysis is that the costs of this are acceptable given humanitarian concerns and practicality for industrialized countries that would benefit from trade liberalization and some level or agricultural/economic convergence. He also believes that market forces alone are insufficient to fixing the problems he has outlined, and encourages nation-states and inter-government organizations to pursue policies that include stabilization of legal rights, subsidies for research in technologies to provide food and capital for the poor (especially women and ethnic minorities), and even redistribution of property.

I consider it a possibility that not enough time has gone by since the Green Revolution started showing diminishing returns to make judgments on the immense inequality of distribution. I would like to point out that most of the world lived in poverty for thousands of years, and only within the past century have we been able to make any significant progress at this level and perhaps the inequalities may smooth out over time if trade is liberalized.

Ultimately, Conway presents a well-researched book and some interesting ideas and alternatives to reach these ideas. I think that he could have explored market solutions more deeply and that this significantly weakens his book. His devotion to the poor and willingness to use governments to interefere significantly with trade and agriculture is disheartening. However, the topic is very interesting and the ultimate goal of increasing food production to meet aggregate demand and basic human needs is noble and important to all of us and generations to come.

The original "Green Revolution" was presented by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as a way to put off imminent starvation worldwide, buying time while humanity tackled the problem of population increase. While crop yields surely increased in the 1960s-1980s (though much less since then), efforts to limit population growth (outside China) mostly faltered. Worse, many of the chemical-intensive practices of the GR proved to be ecologically unsound. Worse still, the focus on yields and population effectively erased the question of food ACCESS from mainstream debates. While we have had food stocks adequate to feed every human on the planet for many decades, we have lacked the will and mechanisms to insure the poor access to that food. Indeed, millions of formerly self-sufficient smallholder farmers have "become" poor in the GR era because they no longer have access to land, nor access to sufficient cash.

This book rightfully states that future green-revolutionaries will need to pay far more attention to the environment, to ensure ecologically sustainable production in the future; and that agricultural scientists will need to work in genuine partnership with farmers (though previous efforts at so-called "partnerships" by such organizations as the World Bank or International Rice Research Institute have been laughably one-sided and dominated by elites). This is (nowadays, at least) relatively uncontroversial. But until and unless we make large political changes regarding food distribution -- food justice, if you will -- we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as far as the poor are concerned.

More production, more ecologically done -- you bet. Population control -- crucial. Greater participation of farmers in agricultural decision-making -- essential. Food justice -- politically difficult, but indispensible. This book tackles elements of the food problem, but leaves a few things out as well.

Participation in agricultural production, it has been repeatedly demonstrated, is the only clear guarantee of participation in food consumption.

The author's central theme is that it is possible to raise yields three-fold on most smallholder farms worldwide by practicing sustainable agriculture. As an architect of the original Green Revolution he can acknowledge its failings (and its successes) better than most. The book's title refers to a need to move beyond the original Green Revolution to a new and more environmentally friendly agenda.

The basic goals outlined in the book are:

-Increase crop yields of small-scale farmers threefold per farm.

-Do so at very low cost by making maximum use of indigenous resources: physical, biological, and human -thereby allowing even the very poor to benefit from improved methods.

-Improve the health of families living on small farms by raising nutrition levels.

-Expand access to food, energy, and water.

-Expand access to economic resources.

Disregard the neo-communist rhetoric of the first reviewer and buy this book - easily earns 8 stars on a scale of 1 to 5.

This book is a good reference but not for those who are not proficient already in MAX. As others have stated, the examples often skip steps, assume knowledge of the workings of the program and show "this is what you should end up with" pictures that don't relate at all to what the instructions give. I get the impression also that each chapter was written by a different person because they cover material that has sometimes been discussed or later chapters cover basic material that was left out at the beginning. If you are beginner, don't buy this.

Well, Boss Hog may get confused easily, but don't let him shy you away from an excellent text. I still recommend this book to people learning Max 3. The tutorials in the first several chapters are very intelligently written, and attempt to tackle very complicated concepts in a very concise manner. The text has helped me master more advanced concepts and tools of both Max the program and animation in general. The section on character work, while a regurgitation of what you'll find in Illusion of Life, Timing for Anim, and Foster's works, is still helpful to the beginner. The first third of the book is also an excellent source of principles that any budding animator who's transitioning to 3D would be wise to read. I've been animating professionally for 7 years, and I think that this text is great. If you get lost on the tutorials, then just read the text and LEARN the PRINCIPLES since that's really the important thing that these experts have to share with you!

This book is Great. It provides an indepth explanation of the concepts and abilities of 3D Studio Max2. It is definately for the more advanced user and is definately a must. The first Vol is like a big encyclopedia that explains the concepts but does not provide real hands on learning methods, This Vol. is by far the best of the 3 and is an important tool in every animators libary.

This book is in itself a good guide to holding an intervention, however I disagree with the information that is used to support it. Throughout the book there are claims that it is a disease, much like diabetes or mumps, and that any time spent looking for enviormental causes, or any cause other than biological, is in fact a waste of time and is detrimental to the addicts chances of recovery.

I find this very closed minded, based on the simple fact that it has only been classified as a "disease" in order to proctect those who are addicts so they will not lose thier jobs, insurance coverage, and will be able to recieve help from society. There is no scientific evidence to prove the theory that addiction is a biological cause, meaning that no outside influences can affect it. If someone has diabetes, a stressful home life does not make them produce more or less insulin, however it can cause an alcholic to want to drink.

I would not recomend this book as anything but a step-by-step intervention guide.

...the disease model is settled science. The American Medical Association has recognized alcoholism as a disease since the 1950s and long-term research of high validity supports the fact that addiciton is a disease...I do hope potential readers of this classic text will not be dissuaded by an unknown source's unfounded personal beliefs.

This gives a good overview of alcoholism and the general technique of intervention. The author makes it quite clear that families can intervene on an alcoholic without using a professional in many cases. This is important for families who do not have the money to hire a professional. But I found that the book does not give a great deal of detailed instruction on how to carry out an intervention. I think, after having done a intervention on someone in my husband's family, the book oversimplifies the whole process. There are many issues that cropped up for us that the book did not cover. While this book is worth reading, it is not the best I've read when it comes to giving practical, detailed advice on actually doing the intervention.

Ian Hogg is an old hand at the military history game. He mostly writes about artillery and other weapons systems, but he obviously has a reasonable command of the generalities of warfare throughout the ages, because he shows it here. This is a collection of short descriptions of battles from all eras of history. It's a bit tilted towards the British and World War 2, but that's to be expected: the author's British, and the Big One is his specialty.

There is a larger problem, though. Since the articles are short, you don't learn much, because there are so few, you're not that likely to find what you're looking for. A historian who isn't normally interested in military history might find this moderately useful: the author will give you a summary of the battle of the Somme or whatever, in a couple of paragraphs. Anyone that interested in the field is going to find things that are left out (from the Battle of Kadesh to numerous engagements in later times) there are just too many things to list in this short of a book. There is a lot of information here, don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining about what's in the book, but what isn't. If you're interested in military history, this is a good starting place as a reference, but don't count on it by itself.

This book is truly exactly what it says, "A concise Dictionary of Battles." Detailing every major battle or military happening from Marathon to Bosnia, this book does an efficient job at outlining the major battles of history with as much information as one could imagine fitting into a paragraph on battles that often result in entire volumes being written to say the same thing. This book will be a disappintment to someone searching for a detailed account of anything, but it would certainly be a great buy for a student in need of general military history who desires a efficient account the greatest battles of history without having to read a 500 page book to find what is quickly presented by Hogg. A buy worth its price without question.

A really fascinating topic but a very disappointing read. I had high hopes for this one but found it written at about the 5th grade level. I don't know why Vern didn't write the book himself. He couldn't have done any worse than Freedman.

About a true hero. As cool as the snow that surrounds him; a man of simple ways and grand accomplishments. It is a rare experience and an honor to tag along on this historical expedition. The reader is drawn into this adventure! I read this after I met Vern and found his ways to be genuine and sincere. Vern is a great friend, regardless of whether you meet him in person or in the book. Enjoy!

To date, this is the worst textbook I have encountered in my math classes. In fact the instructor uses this book for homework assignments only as the text itself is useless.

To start with, I found the explanations to be badly written, wordy, and confusing. Seems as though this book was designed for a refreshment course rather than for people who are going over the material for the first time.

Then, the examples: there are not enough of them, and the examples do not support the exercises at the end of the section, so if you work out the exercises at the end of the section and encounter a problem, you just don't have an example to help you out.

It continues with the student solution manual on line: due to the lack of examples the student's solution manual is the next tool to try to figure things out. However, the manual appears to be put together almost as an after thought. It is very unorganized, uses shortcuts to the solutions that are sometimes difficult to figure out.

In summery, this book makes it difficult to learn on your own. It does not help deepen and re-enforce your understanding of the material covered in class. From my experience so far, there are much better books that make the time learning more efficient, productive, and fun.

I've just finished using this book and, while I normally keep my textbooks as reference materials, I found this book to be so bad that I'm selling it back! This book falls short when it comes to providing solid examples; clear, concise text; and valid exercises. Specifically, the pages are so crammed full of text and colors that it is often difficult to quickly find specific information. Much of the text and many of the examples fail to adequately prepare the student for the exercise sets. Additionally, the accompanying solution manual, which helped me immensely, has numerous typos and is missing several pages of solutions. I wish I were alone in my opinion, but the overwhelming majority of my class felt about the same. Even our professor was less than impressed. If this is the textbook you must have for class, get some additional references, i.e. Schaums, or something similar, perhaps even another 5 star rated book from Amazon.

This book is written for the average college student. The
material is illustrated well and there are many examples
depicting the mathematical concepts. More advanced students
are sufficiently challenged, average students will work hard
and below-average students may have problems. It is important
for the instructor to assign frequent homeworks and review
the homeworks before continuing with new material. A small
minority of students enter college having had NO ALGEBRA in
high school. I wish that some of these students would return
to high school to complete the work they never finished.
Overall, I'm satisfied that the text represents a fair
concensus of the problems encountered in College Algebra.
There are sufficient word problems which require students
to translate verbiage into mathematical formulas. In addition,
classic areas; such as, "complete the square" are covered
thoroughly.

This book made me violently angry for the first semester, the lagrangian is presented well, and the Foucault Pendulum is ok if it weren't for all the errors (not glaring missing d/dt in a couple places, if you know the material you pick it out quickly). NOTICE: IF YOU KNOW THE MATERIAL!! How is a new CM student supposed to do that!!! I did learn well because of the torture of surviving my CM class, the problems sets are pretty neat I will say, but vague at times and a HUGE array of difficulties, from "what's 2+2?" to problems that made me nauseous, and produced intantaneous narcolepsy. In hindsight I learned quite a bit and its a neat litle hand book for the Grad, but man its painful for the new student. I agree WHOLE HEARTIDLY that saying "HEY! this is a tensor" is ridiculous, a math appendix would do WONDERS, or having the Feynman lectures nearby as well. I'd say with some better editing and some more appendecies it would be a good book, beware though the book is TINY and the price is meaty.

I had studied "Classical Dynamics" by Marion more than 25 years ago. At the time I found Marion to be a difficult leap from the relatively easy first courses. Most of the critism, I suspect, comes from hitting the cold water for the first time. I thought the authors did a good job of explaining the concepts I wanted to review. I do not know how I would have felt if this were a first reading as my textbook 25 years ago. The one suggestion I can make is a plea for more example problems worked in detail. Like most physics students, problem solving is the most difficult task to master and seeing the techniques used by the masters are not to be underestimated. Having spent years looking for the one book from which all is clear on first reading this one does not qualify. But it is a good beginning if you choose to stay in the water.

This book, although short, is a fairly good overview of classical mechanics, which emphasizes more recent developments in the theory, such as chaotic dynamical systems. The authors do however remain concrete in their treatment, with real-world examples permeating the text. The details behind the theory of classical mechanics are presented very quickly in the book, and this might make the book difficult to read for students first exposed to mechanics at this level.

Chapter one is an introduction to motion in one dimension. After a brief review of Newton's laws, the authors solve some neat problems dealing with damping forces, one being the frictional force on a drag racer, and the other with aerodynamic drag on a parachute. They also treat the undamped and damped harmonic oscillator, and the discussion is very standard. The authors are careful to point out that some force laws are too complicated to be solved analytically, but that computing methods can be used to solve the cases that are not. Computational approaches are now the rule rather than the exception in problems in mechanics, and this trend will continue in the future.

After a short discussion of energy conservation, the authors introduce motion in three dimensions and give a fairly detailed overview of vector notation. Their approach to tensors though is kind of antiquated, for it motivates them via the outer product, which is reminiscent of the dyadic approach that is currently "out of fashion". The authors also discuss the simple pendulum, but do not of course introduce the elliptic curve solutions that accompany this problem. Such a treatment, however fascinating, would drive this book to a height that would make it inaccessible to the audience of students it addresses. Coupled harmonic oscillators are solved using the normal mode approach.

Lagrangian mechanics is introduced in chapter 3, but not from the standpoint of variational calculus at first. Instead the authors choose to present this formulation via generalized forces. They include a discussion of constraints, and give as an example the simple pendulum with a moving support. Only later do they give the Lagrangian formulation via variational calculus, and do so rather hurriedly. Hamilton's equations are derived, and it is shown (again briefly) how Legendre transformations enter into the formalism of Hamiltonian mechanics.

Conservation principles are then thought of as fundamental in the rest of the book, and the authors use momentum conservation to discuss elastic and inelastic collisions in chapter 4. Angular momentum conservation is then used in chapter 5 to discuss central forces and planetary motion. Kepler's laws are also discussed, and Rutherford scattering is discussed. All of the discussion is pretty standard and can be found in most textbooks on classical mechanics.

Rigid body mechanics makes its appearance in chapter 6, wherein the authors discuss the rotational equations of motion of many-particle systems and rigid bodies. A very brief discussion of gyroscopic mechanics is given, but the authors make up for this by explaining the motion of boomerangs. The discussion is fun to read and should satisfy the curious reader as to why a boomerang returns. And, after a discussion of how to calculate the moment of inertia, the authors give a neat introduction to the physics of billiards and the superball. The latter is a popular physics demonstration and the authors show how its motion differs from an ordinary smooth ball.

The difficult (and controversial) topic of accelerated coordinate systems is treated in chapter 7. The four famous "fictitious" forces are introduced, and to develop the reader's intution on these, the authors give a nice example dealing with the manufacture of telescope mirrors. The casting of the mirrors is a neat illustration of the famous Newtonian water pail experiment. The motion of the Foucault pendulum is also discussed briefly. Then after a discussion of principal axes and Euler's equations, the authors give another neat example, this time dealing with the motion of tennis rackets, which illustrates the motion of a rigid body with unequal principal moments of inertia. The physics of tops is then discussed, and in a manner which makes the underlying physics more intuitive for the reader. The authors make an attempt to understand the motion of the famous tippie-top, but don't really do so. The tippie-top is another popular demonstration in the classroom but its physics has eluded the best attempts, and this treatment is no exception. The flip times that are calculated are not in agreement at all with what is observed in the demonstration.

Chapter 8 is an overview of gravitational physics, and the authors show the effects of a body moving in a non-uniform gravitational field, with an example dealing with the tides. Interestingly, the authors attempt to introduce the general theory of relativity, and do so more at a level of elementary mathematics and arm-waving arguments, but the treatment is suitable at this level. The authors show the difference between the orbits predicted by general relativity and the Newtonian theory, i.e. the famous perihelion advance.

A brief overview of Newtonian cosmology is given in chapter 9, wherein the authors discuss the expansion of the universe and the cosmic redshift. After proving the virial theorem, they discuss the effects of dark matter on the rotations of spiral galaxies and groups of galaxies, which is currently a very hot topic in astrophysics.

The special theory of relativity is treated in chapter 10, and the discussion is very standard. Readers are introduced to relativistic mechanics and some of the counterintuitive physics of the theory.

The last chapter of the book is an introduction to non-linear dynamics and chaos. It is defined as sensitive dependence on initial conditions, although this is not a strong enough condition. The Duffing oscillator is offered as an example of chaotic behavior and the transition to chaos is studied as a function of the driving frequency. This brings up concepts from bifurcation theory, such as the idea of a strange attractor. Numerical analysis plays the dominant role in these theories.