This is a heartwarming story about being able to always depend on your friends. Ken Brown's ability with watercolors give his brightly colored characters expressions that will tug on your heart.

Ostrich is always asking sparrow "Why can't I fly?" Sparrow's answers of; your neck is too long, your legs are too long, and your wings are too small are refuted by ostrich with examples of other birds with those traits that have no trouble flying. When sparrow suggests that ostrich doesn't try hard enough,ostrich sets out to prove to sparrow and himself that he CAN fly! A series of disastrous attempts at building flying machines leave him emmbarrassed in front of his friends. His final try is a whole different story and gives new meaning to the word friendship! My daughter and I cheered as ostrich finally realizes his life-long dream! Ken Brown hits a home run with his debut book!

I was born in 1979 so I was too young to even know about the Sex Pistols. However, growing up, I heard a lot about them and became quite fond of them. I would hear these crazy stories about the band but I didn't know what to believe. Now picking up this book I know what to believe and what not to believe.

Lydon has nothing to hide in this book and that is evident when you are reading it. He gives his honest feeling towards the Pistols, former band members, record executives, British royalty, the music business in general, etc. However, what many people don't realize without reading this book is how intelligent Lydon is and how right-on he is with his views.

Lydon has always been comical to me. He says funny things and acts in outrageous ways that always makes me chuckle. This book maintains Lydon's wit while also being upfront with many issues (i.e. Sid's death).

I would highly recommend this book to fans and non-fans of the Pistols. This book is more a history of a movement and what it was like to be involved in the chaos. Great job Lydon!

Judging by the cover of my copy of "Rotten," I expected good old Johnny Rotten (lead singer for the Sex Pistols) to use his autobiography to deliver a snarling attack on both other rock musicians and the world at large. I was only half right.

While a good portion of the book is devoted to allowing the voices of other punk musicians to describe the era, there is a high level of anger toward other bands and punk figures. Sid Vicious comes across as a clothes-rack on drugs, while almost every other band labled punk gets called 'copier.' Quite a lot of snarling goes down, which gets old after a while.

At the same time, Lydon spends much of the book trying to dispell the myths and legends surrounding his role as the menacing personification of punk. In fact, as I was reading, I got the feeling that his underlying message was, "Hey, everybody, I'm not so bad after all--I'm really just a regular guy!" I found myself comforted by his rational and very un-menacing explanations of everything from the origin of gobbing to the Pistols' infamous and contraversial R-rated talk show appearance. Johnny Rotten even tells us that: 1) he loves his mum, and 2) he wanted to be a teacher! Most startling, however, are the very human reactions Lydon describes when detailing events such as the death of Sid Vicious and the breakup of the Pistols. However, just when I get cozy with this new image and accept him as a shy man blown out of proportion by the media, Lydon gives us anecdotes about cooking his own waste in a pan and serving it to guests.

Is this the real Johnny Rotten? Or are we just being pulled in as part of a Rotten plot to fool the personality-hungry types who read autobiographies? Although Lydon comes across as an extremely intelligent, interesting man, the pull of his media personality is so strong that I had trouble resisting it enough to allow myself to accept what the man says about himself as truth. I guess that's why he hates the media so much.

Overall this is a smartly written book, very entertaining, with a thorough look into the life of a fascinating person. For all of Johnny's explanations of the facts, though, I felt that he left out some of the intangible things surrounding the Pistols that made the whole thing come together: the feeling of the time, his own personal charisma, and the luck of discovery.

What a smart, intense, focused and self-serving piece of work John Lydon is, bless his heart! Malcolm McLaren may have opined that anyone he picked off the street could have been the kingpin of the Sex Pistols, but read this rambling narrative and there's no doubt it was Johnny Rotten Lydon's crude but specific 'gut' vision at the core of what the Pistols and Punk were and still are about, even after these many years.

The depiction of Lydon's incredible hardships growing up--though not unusual for large numbers of young people in his time in the U.K.-- the touching accounts of his unconventional but loving and supportive family--the brawling street lifestyle--all reveal a vivid, tough-as-nails character who was both a product and an architect of his niche in history. Boy to man, John Lydon's life journey as told comes off as guided by a strong, instinctive and original view of the world. Such unconventional principles may be temporarily derailed and occasionally muddied, but will ultimately be served through his pure, steely intention.

Some information in the autobiography -- Lydon's words interspersed (sometimes confusingly) with those of others -- has been hashed and rehashed in other works about Punk, the Pistols and the times. But a good 60 percent of "Rotten" is fascinating stuff only Lydon could speak to. A small but noteworthy example: Johnny Rotten's characteristic wide, unblinking stare was not an affectation of his punk persona, but the result of eye damage caused by his year-long bout with meningitis at the age of seven.

Though Lydon goes to great lengths at every turn to discredit his archnemesis Malcolm McLaren - even reproducing deposition material from his ultimately successful lawsuit against the former manager -- the most persistent irritant in his craw remains the apochryphal legend of Sid. John's brief but telling recollections of Sid as being, well, Sid -- are still rife with jealousy. While Lydon is a fascinating, admirable, brilliant, surviving and functioning piece of sociological and musical history, he never was the 'Sex' in Sex Pistols. That role unmistakably belongs to Sid, and years and years later John Lydon still hasn't gotten over that one little bit.

I am a complete beginner and found the book fairly easy to read and apply. However, some of the scripts I downloaded don't seem to work. Maybe its my lack of understanding, I don't know...

You must know how to read html to get anywhere with PHP. You can use Dreamweaver or any other HTML editor to write your scripts in.

The book has a good Appendix for all the PHP functions and the authors do a great job at explaining PHP at the beginning of the book.

Each chapter starts off with a real basic script as it develops and adds more functions to the script until you end up with a fairly advanced script. Every time they add more stuff to a script they break each line down with explanations.

Over all its a good place to start with a lot of Reference material for advanced users. However, if you have never programmed or want to get an easier start with php, I recommend "Php : Your Visual Blueprint for Creating Open Source, Server-Side Content" ISBN: 0764535617. Then move to the PHP Cookbook.

I recently purchased this book, and as some of the other reviewers have said, it rarely leaves my desk. I found this book to be written at an ideal level of difficulty for someone with a good working knowledge of HTML, and NOTHING more.

This book has helped me develop from a static HTML designer to a capable PHP programmer. The book covers a number of topics that I'd always wanted to use on my sites, including: cookies, sessions, interactive forms, and database connectivity, including an introduction to using SQL to connect to a number of different databases.

The book has a number of tutorials and examples which perform the key function of transferring what you are learning into practical examples (often lacking in beginning books).

There is also a great appendix of functions that gives the new programmer a reference to which they can refer for quick answers. Finally, and maybe best of all, Wrox has a great Web site with a number of forums related to the topics covered in the book.

Overall, it's a great book for beginners. I used what I'd learned in the first week to add a number of dynamic features to my own Web sites, and the difference was instantly noticeable. Best of luck!

This book is well written with the absolute beginner in mind. If you already are at an intermediate level, then this book will seem very simple to you. Then again, they would've named it Intermediate PHP. Some people may be put off by the repetition in the lessons, but for me, it's perfect. It helps things to sink in better if it's repeated several times.

Yes, this book has errors and typos just like any other book does, but if you go to the Wrox website, they have a very good eratta. I printed it out, then cut each page's eratta into strips and inserted them into the apropiate pages. No more problem!

If you're a complete newbie to programming or PHP, get this book! You won't regret it. By the end of this book, you'll be writing some fairly advanced and useful scripts.

I picked this book up at my local library as soon as I saw it on the shelf. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Hell's Angels are a part of 20th century American history and culture, and the lion's share of the credit for this fact goes to Sonny Barger. It was interesting to read *the* insider's look at the Angels, whose image has been heavily mythologized, both positively and negatively, since the 1950s.

The first chapters of the book were more interesting to me, since they dealt with the history of motorcycle gangs in 1940s and 1950s America, the formation of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club, and the personalities and activities that put the group on the map, as it were. Descriptions of Angels' club rules, codes of conduct, and reflections on their famous runs and riots were riveting.

But as the book went along it became less about the HAMC and more about the trials (literally) and tribulations of Sonny Barger. Granted, Barger is an interesting personality and I came away with a certain admiration for the man, and the book is the story of Sonny Barger and not just the club, but chapters about Barger's drug trials, incarcerations, and other travails were less interesting to me than stories of the heady early days of the HAMC.

All told, however, this is a good look into one of the more interesting but neglected parts of 20th century American society.

I was born in Oakland California in 1940. I saw the Angels around 1958, when I was working as a custom auto painter/pinstriper. The club was a small group of "very real" guys who had the first "Choppers". I painted and pinstriped several of the clubs "Bikes" and got to know some of the members, along with Ralph (Sonny). This was one group that wasn't going to change to the so called "modern world", yet Ralph was very hip to the latest ways. He also studied the ways of several world leaders, and learned from their mistakes. (my own observation).

The book was very well written for the subject matter, and shows a lot of the personal life of a very dedicated person. The so-called "Blood & Guts" of the book was mild compared to some of the things that man has created. The Angels believed in one thing, "Don't screw with us and we won't bother you."

Once you have read the "Good Parts," you will find that there is a real "inner depth' to the club and it's Chief. I have written my autobiography "It Ain't Gonna Work" which clearly shows that many of us have traveled down the same path.

Back in the late 60's, I was a member of the Green Dragon'sMotorcycle Club in Houston. We were a linked brotherhood with theBanditos MC. During a rally in Dallas, some 50 or 60 Hell's Angels attended. To my pride I was able to meet Sonny Barger, he was at that time with the Oakland Chapter of the Hell's Angel.

He is nothing short of one classy, dedicated to bikes and bikers, and honest to the bone. This book, he brings IT ALL OUT. I was amazed to read how the Angels got started and managed to stay together dispite the law breathing all over them, the public have a definite attitude against them. It was Sonny who kept the brotherhood together. Yes, we all know of the legal problems with the ANgels as well as other biker groups, in this book Sonny is totally honest and forthcoming. He has some very funny stories on state rallys and of course the problem at Altamont. This book is a must read for all bikers and those who WANT TO BE A BIKER. A classic read by Sonny. May God Bless You Sonny and keep doing just what you are doing. Don't change one thing. "The Attorney" Green Dragons MC - Houston

An interesting book that wants to be the zen-like parable of the internet age with Komisar as the zen master proferring advice from the tables at the Konditorei coffee shop in Silicon Valley. And Komisar does do a nice job of articulating what he thinks is important for a business start-up to succeed. A lot of it has to do with recognizing the difference between passion and drive. Passion for a business is far more valuable an indicator of potential success to Komisar's mind and we spend the pages of this short book hearing his advice to his grasshopper...er, student entrepreneur. While the book is a good, easy read, I couldn't help but feel that the author comes off as a bit of a smug know-it-all who finally gets the sadsack of a mentee over to his way of thinking, the right true way, of course. All this is easy enough when you're telling the story and protecting the identities of the ones who need to be coached into coming around. Not sure if there's much here to help those who want a real-world view of what it's really like to make their way as a startup in search of capital, especially as the markets for capital get tighter. Still, business readers seem to love parables and pearls and there are plenty of those tossed in here.

The insights offered in this book go beyond merely "educating" a silicon valley entrepreneur as suggested by the hardcover title. I like the paperback title better - "The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living".

The book explains the difference between oft-confused words: passion & drive, management & leadership, risk & uncertainty, comfort & fulfillment, the deferred life plan & the whole life plan. These differences are explained with the example of a business plan that is progessively improved from the initial "Better-Faster-Cheaper" look to a "Brave New World" look.

The book is well-written and easy to read. Those who have read "The Goal" will find a similar organization of ideas in this book. After flipping through the last page, I found myself thinking about the best answers to many questions looming in my mind. These are all good signs about the book!

However, in continuously driving the idea of getting out of complacency and into a 'brave new world', the book did not provide insights on how one may balance the two. Komisar speaks from personal experience in the book and recalls the turning point of his life when he decided that he wouldn't be a lawyer by profession any more. He says that a lot of what he did upto that point was living "The Deferred Life Plan" (do what you have to do now, do what you want to do later). The reader is left with the impression that Komisar even viewed his Harvard education in this light. But would he have been where he is today if he hadn't got an education from Harvard? The progression of events in our life is a related one. Your past actions definitely impact the future. His Harvard education led him to a good job at a law firm where he added to his network of contacts.

In this context, Komisar failed to address the issue that we all *have* to do certain things in our lives. Not everything can be what we *want* to do - e.g., is it wise to pursue a 'brave new world' idea when you're 13 years old? Or if you're old enough, but do not have enough savings to sustain yourself through failure? Maybe, maybe not. There is always a goal we have to accomplish (pay off our debts, take care of our obligations) before we can do what we *want* to do. It is upto each person to realize for themselves that they're living "The Deferred Life Plan" when they truly don't *have* to, anymore. Only then will it make sense (and be more fulfilling) to switch to "The Whole Life Plan". The book would have been complete if Komisar had provided his insights about how one might attempt to balance the two points of view.

That's the only reason I cut out 1 star from my rating.

Bottom line: Get it!

This is an excellent book for two groups of people: Young Entrepreneur seeking seed or early round financing for an idea or business; and young financiers entering the field of Angel Investing.

It is not a book for "get rich quick" entrepreneurs looking to create yet another burger.... not that you could in this corrected and more realistic market environment. It speaks to the heart and soul of the entrepreneur looking to build a solid company based on a passion for what they do, and to the Angel who wants to help others realize their passion.

Young entrepreneurs will find Randy Komisar's business philosophy and words of wisdom useful in structuring and focus the thinking around the business plan. And it will help organize the presentation to capital sources. It offers the insight of an experienced manager and operator who has been through the ups and downs of various new ventures and may just help you avoid some of the dumb mistakes.

Young Angels will find it offers a lot of helpful guidance for thinking about the plans your looking at. Even if you have management and operating experience you'll find this a useful articulation of many key points.

I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

It's always dangerous to label a book as a "masterpiece": that word seems to scare away most readers and distances everyone from the substance of the book itself. Still, I'm going to say that this is the Greatest American Novel because I really think that it is--after having read it myself.

Honestly, Moby Dick IS long and looping, shooting off in random digressions as Ishmael waxes philosophical or explains a whale's anatomy or gives the ingredients for Nantucket clam chowder--and that's exactly what I love about it. This is not a neat novel: Melville refused to conform to anyone else's conventions. There is so much in Moby Dick that you can enjoy it on so many completely different levels: you can read it as a Biblical-Shakespearean-level epic tragedy, as a canonical part of 19th Century philosophy, as a gothic whaling adventure story, or almost anything else. Look at all the lowbrow humor. And I'm sorry, but Ishmael is simply one of the most likable and engaging narrators of all time.

A lot of academics love Moby Dick because academics tend to have good taste in literature. But the book itself takes you about as far from academia as any book written--as Ishmael himself says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Take that advice and forget what others say about it, and just experience Moby Dick for yourself.

Most readers of Moby Dick seem to praise it for the wrong reasons and some miss the boat completely.

Criticize all you want of Melville's scientific inaccuracy, wandering themes, or even his improper punctuation. The guy wrote this thing in a year - not enough time to refine it, and it was a book he knew would not sell.

Underneath a mess of useless whaling information and Ishmael's rambling are ideas and questions that most people don't dare think about. Unlike Charles Darwin, Galileo or the fearless Ahab, Melville hid safely behind his metaphors and guided the careful readers to draw their own conclusions without completely leading the way.

Let me explain.

While to Ishmael, Moby Dick is nature's wonder and to Starbuck is just a whale, to Ahab Moby Dick is God, with his infinite power.

There are some disturbing things in the universe begging for an explaination, such as why one person is rewarded with happyness while another punished in suffering. There are feel-good answers, like the idea that the score will be evened in the afterlife and there are humble answers, like the book of Job, which suggests that man has no right to complain or question God. Melville's Ahab takes this to another level when he asks why man needs to be God's puppets. Ahab is insulted by God's creation of man, letting man live in suffering, "with half a heart and half a lung".

The bewildered God-fearing masses will not comprehend the depth Melville trys to take them. This most important theme was written for the pursuit of truth, not happyness. This book is not for everyone, and a lot of chapters are better off skipped, but those with enough empathy for Melville will find an emotional and intellectual adventure.

This book covers interfacing Java and XML using a variety of techniques. It introduces the use of a DOM parser and a SAX parser. They use (recommend) IBM's source code. It does an excellent job covering these techniques and shows the reader how to parse sample XML documents. However, it was a bit spartan in its treatment of the DOM API, but they admit that it would be quite lengthy.

The book then attempts to cover a variety of places where one would use Java and XML. I felt that this was not necessary. A programmer who reads this book is probably advanced enough to know the constaints and issues of his/her system without having to decipher the author's cryptic helper functions. While some are useful, I felt that the authors' examples were more unique to their problems, rather than generic.

Although not a comprehensive book, I felt the first couple of chapters are about all a professional level programmer should read. The feeling of the book was that the authors wanted to make a book out of a relatively small topic. If you already know a SAX parser or a DOM parser, the usefulness of the book declines. If you need an overview of Javabeans or JDBC then some of the chapters might be helpful. In closing, I would NOT attempt to read this book without a basic understanding of Java, HTML and XML.

I found this book very useful, covers a lot of unique topics
in advanced XML processing, practical and to the point.
Especially enjoyed coverage of advantages and disadvantages
of different techniques.

Would be nice to cover these topics a bit deeper,
little more on architecture.
How about making 3rd edition 1000 pages,
maybe without CD-ROM, put code online
(any XML/Java developer has Internet access now).
And Websphere and DB2 getting outdated very quickly.

Already understand the basics of both XML and Java? Looking for an application development guide to tie things together? Then this could be the book for you.

The chapters on document construction, parsing with DOM and SAX, document conversion, and interfacing databases with XML applied directly to the server side content management framework we're developing. The clear and concise writing style employed by the authors is a bonus.

This book isn't a comprehensive reference, and it doesn't include much information on writing stylesheets, DTDs, or emerging XML standards. But it does includes a comprehensive set of references from which you can obtain more information. The code samples on the CD are also unusually valuable.

You can spend weeks or months digging for this information on your own, or you can save yourself a ton of money and time by purchasing this book.

Plainsong, a book by Kent Haruf, is a book that describes the lives of some of the residents in Holt, Colorado. Different plots deal with various issues of life, death, and a community that connects together. A tale of Tom Guthrie, who is a history teacher at the area high school. He is left to raise his two "twin-like" sons, Ike and Bobby, after his wife abandons him and their family. Victoria, a 17 year-old high school senior, is thrown out of her house by her crude and bitter mother after she had learned that her daughter is pregnant. The McPheron Brothers, lonely, sheltered, and isolated from the rest of the world, are a couple of aged bachelors, and all they know are themselves and life on their ranch. When they were fourteen years old, they were left to live on their own after their parents died. They have missed out on important and "normal" things in their life after choosing to stay with each other and to not get married. Ken Haruf interweaves the lives of these characters beautifully through the character of Maggie Jones. She is the most "flawless" character of the bunch, because she is compassionate, generous, and beautiful. Not to mention, the responsible party for helping and improving their outlook on their lives.
This book started slowly at first but once it started to pick up, I couldn't put it down. I constantly found myself wondering what was going to happen next with each character. Ken Haruf also does a wonderful job making the reader feel what the characters are feeling. He also painted a vivid mental image of the setting which helped me visualize Holt, Colorado. This is a warm, heart-felt story in which Haruf reminds us that in hard times, people come together to mend each others hearts.

A very economically-written, precisely-edited story about human kindness found in unlikely places. Haruf's Colorado community is the quintessential small town, where everybody knows not only your name, but your business--or thinks they do. It is hard-working, undemonstrative, and--this is the meat of this book--it takes care of its own with quiet concern and a minimum of fanfare.

Haruf's characters carry the story, mostly through dialogue and description; there is very little introspection. It works: my heart ached for his protagonists, a quietly righteous teacher, his two young sons, his estranged, depressive wife; a pregnant highschool girl whose mother kicks her out of the house; two wryly hilarious old farmers who perform an unlikely act of mercy. Even the villians--the parents of a surly, lost teenaged boy and the kid himself--are human and recognizable archtypes who might well live next door. Bit-players, minor actors--although they might have spent little time in print, these too were fully fleshed and caught in as few words as possible.

The writer's approach reminds me of Larry Brown's--the tightness of the editing, the simplicity of the imagery. Amazing, too, the mood he sets by not using quote marks; I kept asking myself how it would have changed the book to do so. An interesting stylistic gesture, but one that made a subtle but profound mark on the way I read the story.

Every now and then, there comes an author keenly attuned to the rhythms of our speech, the conflicts of our hearts and the values which motivate our actions. Kent Haruf's spellbinding "Plainsong" so deftly recreates the atmosphere of a small, isolated, rural American town and populates that community with such compelling, conflicted and endearing characters that the reader simply cannot put his novel down. As did Steinbeck before him (and as do such gifted contemporaries as Kaye Gibbons and Ivan Doig), Mr. Haruf truly believes common, everyday Americans have much to say about what defines the national character. There is such dignity and decency in this book, shown against backdrops of cruelty, isolation and loneliness. Perhaps that is one reason I found myself humbled, by book's end, in reading it. This is a book to cherish and to share and will become one of the most memorable reading experiences in your life.

This profoundly important work will remind readers what the purpose of literature is: to inform us, through the action of an absorbing narrative, that humans serve a distinctive purpose, and that purpose, though obscured by personal anguish, desperate lonelines and unfair circumstances, is to understand, assist and grow to love each other. Each of the seven central characters, who evolve into their own community, seems driven to comprehend and act on the central premise of human frailty and interdependence. Thus, whether it be a father coping with the fragility of his sons' emotional health in light of their mother's evolving emotional and physical removal from life or a quietly resolute teacher searching for solutions to a teen's unexpected pregnancy or two old bachelor brothers awakening to the confusing, liberating possibilities of life, Mr. Haruf invests them with uncommon purpose and promise.

Thomas Jefferson once said that our nation possesses "hope enough and to spare." Reading this triumphant novel, a reader will find renewal in the belief that our national purpose -- built on a sense of optimism and hope -- continues to live and to thrive in the hearts and minds of our most uncommom common people.

First, this book is not a reference book but instead more of a story. I look forward to Kent writing a more reference-oriented book that cites examples. Some of the concepts, therefor, are vague and left to the readers imagination; I would have preferred if he talked more about testing as it is one of the fundamentals of XP. That being said, there are some unique changes to the standard approach in development. Most specifically: pair programming, automated testing, story-telling, and last but not least, collective ownership. My first reaction to his concepts were both negative and skeptical. As I read on I saw him explain those the things that always bothered me about current design and development approaches that simply never worked (i.e. designing abstracts for the future is just guesswork and often incorrect after a year passes). As I continued, his ideas went from being odd to pragmatic and began implementing them at the company I'm currently working for. We are now starting to better understand XP, and we are in a VB and C++ environment which makes it even more challenging. My team is starting to embrace the concepts and already are looking forward to pairing up and watching the tests run. Its not clear this early in the project the short-term advantages, but if this pans out I can see long-term being far more flexible than our competitors when we need to steer our product down a new path in order to follow our client's needs.

According to Ken Back, Extreme Programming (XP) is a discipline of software development that is based on 12 practices. Most of the programmers out there have exercised some of these (if not all) XP practices for a long time, so these may not be new stuff to them and in software development, in general. However, using them as a guideline for a project is what makes a programmer an eXtreme Programmer. The book is very easy and fast to read. Take a look at it, you might improve your existing and learn some new programming skills. I would say, one of the strongest points in this book is testing. Testing is something I would, most of the time, like to pass on others or leave as a final step in the development face. Ken suggests to write the test first, and test your code at all times - think about it. Another valid point would be simple design. A program written with XP is the simplest program that meets the requirements. Other practices include: planning process, small releases, metaphor, refactoring, pair programming, collective ownership, integration, 40-hour week, on-site customer and coding standards. Enjoy!

I believe that XP is one of the most important breakthroughs in quality-focused development in the past decade. It is a language-independent approach that embodies what is best in software engineering, project planning and control, and attention to quality.

This book is a fast overview of XP and should be required reading for any development manager who wants to get control of cost, schedule and quality. Despite its small page count, it covers all of the key points and will demonstrate to those who are put off by the name, "Extreme Programming", that this is a viable approach.

As I read through this book I saw a lot of parallels in the author's description of XP to some of the best practices and key process areas of the capability maturity model. I was especially surprised at how close XP is to Watts Humphrey's personal and team software processes. These similarities show that XP is a serious software engineering approach and a good fit into companies that have invested in improving their capabilities through attainment of the higher CMM levels, software engineering process groups, etc. Indeed, the metrics that are collected and used by XP practitioners will feed valuable data into an SQA group for transformation into meaningful data for process and quality improvement.

Don't let the title "Extreme Programming" or the short page count of this book deter you from taking it seriously. Mr. Beck clearly describes XP and amply proves its value in this brief survey. If you want to see just how serious XP as a software engineering and project management discipline, read this book, then get a copy of Watts Humphrey's A Discipline for Software Engineering. I give this book 5 stars and my highest recommendation.

I became interested in this book after reading a favorable review in the NY Times book review, and being new to Egyptology, I was pleased to find that Weeks did a remarkable job of providing plenty of background information on the Valley of the Kings, history of some of the Pharoes of Egypt, various explorers who have visited the area (and KV5) in the past, the people who have joined his crew on the exploration of KV5 and the effects of modern life on the condition of the tombs.

He does an excellent job of holding the narrative together, and I eagerly awaited each new page to see what (if anything), Weeks and his team would discover next. He made no attempt to hide his excitement with each new discovery (and disappointment into running into dead ends and other obstacles), and does a competent job in placing the reader alongside him in the tomb.

This is my first book on Egyptology, and both the seasoned Egyptologist and general reader will find this to be a fascinating tale of archaeology in action.

I liked this book. Kent Weeks makes his KV5 experience personal and includes the reader throughout "Lost Tomb". I like the fact that he explains the back ground of various events and problems he comes across while trying to map out Thebes. I would recommend this book to people like me . . . people who have never been to Egypt, but who hope to go one day; people who have read alot of books by archeologists and egyptologists but have no formal education on the subject; and finally, people who like to read good books. Good job, Mr. Weeks. I look forward to reading your next book.

Ignore the nit-picking criticisms of some of the other attached reviews by would-be egyptologists; Weeks' discovery and subsequent investigation of a significant unexplored section of a tomb dismissed by the "professional" community has provoked much jealous, petty sniping. The facts are that his credentials are well established, as any read of the book will show, and his team's persistence uncovered what may yet turn out to be one of the most extensive sites in the Valley. Furthermore, he deserves additional praise for potentially saving an incredible location that was actively endangered by encroaching twentieth century activity, as anyone who actually has the interests of the science at heart would attest. If you are at all interested in the subject, his account is engaging and readable; the excitement of the discovery is well captured and conveyed to the reader. Furthermore, his commentary on the people and culture of modern Egypt is well worth reading, illustrating how politics and archaeology are unfortunately sometimes inseparable and how a true professional in the field must understand both to be effective. Do not let wanna-be armchair quarterbacks dissuade you from enjoying this book; I for one look forward to additional documentation of the other areas of the complex, as they are opened, and trust that Weeks will be working and contributing to the field for years to come.