I started reading the Clearwater Crossing series when I found the first book at the library. Since then I have been buying the books from the book store because of the time that it takes for the library to get the books. I love this series, but not this book, it's a big let down.

Eight Prime is taking CPR and water training training classes in order to become certified camp counselors for Camp Clearwater. Jenna is horrified that nobody is taking it seriously except her and Peter. Melanie is occupied with her confussion about her feelings for Jessie, Ben is acting like his normal childish self, and Leah and Miguel are having problems with their relationship.

Nicole recently got into the CCHS cheerleading squad after Melanie dropped out. She is thrilled about getting to know her fellow cheerleaders, but soon finds out that they don't want to have anything to do with her, due to their suspicions that they lost Melainie because of her. Nicole is also having to deal with Courtney, who recently always has her nose in Self-Help books.

Miguel is even more determined than ever to get his family into a house of their own. He has even picked one out and is working hard to get a down payment together. Leah supports him, but is upset that he will let it keep him from enjoying the end of his senior year with her. Meanwhile, Shane, a college guy Leah's father introduced her to, is constantly stopping over at her house to give her presents and to ask her to go places with him.

Jenna and Peter are busier than ever getting ready for Camp Clearwater. While Jenna is out getting craft supplies she misses a turn and has to turn around in Miguel's neighborhood. She wishes she didn't, however, when she spots Miguel kissing Sabrina.

This book is by far the worst Clearwater Crossing book so far. The plot is exciting, but the characters act totally different than they did in the previous books. For example, Jenna seems like someone half her age and at one point yells at everyone in Eight Prime. Also, Jesse actually seemed half-way decent in this book.

If you have never read any of the other Clearwater Crossing books, don't start with this one. But if you have read all the other ones go get it from the library. After reading it once, I doubt you'll ever read it again.

This was the best Clearwater Crossing book yet, and I have them all. I can't wait to find out if Jesse and Melanie get back together. I hope they do. I'm mad at Nicole for dumping Guy. She doesn't deserve him. I really can't wait for the next book to come out!!

Tried and True, like the rest of the Clearwater Crossing books, is another awesome addition to the series. I just got the book and wasn't able to put it down.

Eight Prime is finally getting closer to fulfilling their dream of having summer camp. They still have to finish the necessary safety courses, but with all the goofing off, Jenna is afraid they're never going to pass. While Jenna and Peter are devoted to the summer camp preparations, Nicole is attempting to establish herself as a cheerleader, Miguel is obsessed with work, work, work, and Leah is doubtful about her future. Melanie, frustrated with getting Jesse back and uncertain about her choice of dropping out of cheerleading, can't seem to make much progress with anything. And Ben is just Ben.

There's not a dull moment in this book as the eight are trying to have fun preparing for summer holidays amid their struggles. Whether it's Leah questioning Miguel's attitude or Nicole trying to be popular, this book was great to read. It was funny, thoughtful, and intriguing. I definitely recommend it anyone who enjoys this series or looking for a fun new realistic series to read.

I've really enjoyed reading this book, because it kind ofrefreshed me on what happened in books 1 to 4, but I really didn'tfind out a lot more than in the other books. They even repeat theconversations from the books.

We already know what the girls arelike- Jenna tries to be kind and patient, Nicole is obsessed with herappearance and weight, Melanie is nice but misunderstood, and Leahdoesn't care about being a model but is just interested in hereducation. Basically, that's what you read in the diary. Nicole, whoI find a bit tiring, had the least interesting diary, but in Melanie'sdiary, you find out a bit more about how lonely and sad she really issometimes. Jenna's diary offers her perspective about the beginningof Eight Prime, and Leah's diary was my favorite because I likeher.

I can't say the diary was boring, because it's not. However,it's not worth buying unless you want to collect the entire series. Iwould just recommend trying to get a copy from a friend or out of thelibrary.

This was a great addition to the series for Cleawater Crossingfans. It gave you a totally different viewpoint of books 1-4. It alsogave you a chance to really get to know Melanie, Nicole, Leah and Jenna. Its definitly worth the read. however, if you haven't read books 1-4 some of the diary parts may not make sense so I recommend you read those 1st.

The Diaries was an excellant and exciting book on the diaries of Jenna,Nicole,Melanie,and Leah on how their life is and how they think of themselves. I thought it was excellant and I recommend this to other teenage girls my age. I also think they should have the Clearwater Crossing series on television because its worth to read and watch them if they have it on television. :)

This book covers some interesting material; I especially liked the chapter which discussed obtaining the results of a quantum computation without actually running the computer. The authors also give some very complete explanations of fundamental concepts such as the workings of a quantum logic gate and RSA encryption. However, their explanations are also riddled with errors and undefined notation. Often, they will spend a great deal of time explaning rather trivial things, then in the next paragraph introduce the next step with a new notation and not define it!! The result is that the calculations are often hard to follow.

This book is a good read for those interesting in learning about the basics of quantum computers, but look elsewhere for a more rigourous treatment of the mathematics of quantum computing.

In spite of many interesting subjects described in the book, explanations about fundamentals of quantum theory seem to me quite insufficient, as like as they had been written in a hurry. I would have not understood many issues quoted in the book if I had not read before other publications about paradoxes raised by quantum physics. Another very strange choice is to place the chapter about interaction-free measurement at last, while I think this property is a necessary basic for a better understanding of properties of entanglement, above which the whole building of quantum computing relies. So, I wonder how readers without a previous knowledge of basic subjects can have dealt with the problems the book tries to explain. Surely, this book has been written for nonspecialists, as the editorial review states, but, taking into account the poor effort employed in explaining quantum theory, it could have detailed more facets about computing, and simply referencing other textbooks for physics arguments.

If you are interested in the promising field of quantum computing, this one is the primer to read. It's very well written, coherent, and goes deep enough as to challenge the reader's mind. However, don't be intimidated by the math. Even if one skips the mathematical concepts the reader will be able to understand the book and more importantly the concepts behind it. Good read, good buy.

I have to give the author credit for writing a book about this band, one of my favorite groups. This story should have been written some time ago. The book for the most part is well researched and fairly even-handed. People who might not know much about the band other than their (or more truthfully, Fogerty's) hits will be very surprised at how interesting and sad this story is. The biggest flaw I have with this book is that their is no John Fogerty interview for this book. To get Fogerty's side he uses past magazine and interviews in those articles and he uses them well. But since this is a complex and emotional story that is largley he said/they said, for me this is a vital missing element.Fogerty comes very badly in some sections of the book and while what was written and said may or may not be true, I feel it comes off very one-sided.Cook and Clifford (who came across to me as very ungrateful. I mean, John Fogerty was primarily the reason the band reached the heights they did. If it wasn't for him, they would not be where they are today)however, did give interviews for this book and at times while they are respectful, a good portion of the time they spent criticizing Fogerty's personality, methods, etc. ( again, if Fogerty is that bad, why do Cook and Clifford trying to get him to come back and re-form the band? It's obvious they can't make it on their own). Also, as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, the songs they play in concert, except "Suzy Q" and "I heard it Through the Grapevine" are all John Fogerty songs. The same John Fogerty they complain about. Cook and Clifford don't even sing their own songs off Mardi Gras ( they may be greedy, but they're not stupid. They know who made the money for them). It's these sort of contradictions that I wish the author would have expanded on and it's these things are why I think the book comes off as a bit one-sided. Overall, though, the author does a solid job of writing on this subject and since this is the only book written on Fogerty and the band, I recommend it.

A band that generated almost as many lawsuits as hit singles, Creendece Clearwater Revival became a mainstain of both FM and AM radio during the 60's and 70's. John Fogerty's solo career has continued successfully and the remaining band members (John's older brother Tom died in 1990) have resumed touring as CCR Revisited. While they've managed to put some of the past difficulties with their old label behind them (via the lawsuits), Stu Cook, Doug Clifford and John Fogerty have never been able to settle the issues that tore this seminal rock band apart.

Bordowitz does a fine job of detailing the conflicts and legal tensions that caused the band to implode. Although they all contributed to the sound of the band (and the break up), Fogerty (naturally) got the lion's share of praise because he wrote, sang and produced the songs for the band. A musical polymath, Fogerty has never been able to distance himself from the emotional turmoil that their success generated.

The trouble with any nonfiction book about a band is that it's always going to be second hand information and interpretation despite the wealth of interviews included here. It's clear that whatever happend between the members was due to very complex dynamics. The author does a very good job of distilling the essence of the conflict between the four members. None of the band members are portrayed as saints and John Fogerty comes off as enormously talented but every bit the control freak.

We'll never really know what went on within CCR except that it's clear that the very thing that drove them also tore them apart. The author manages to convey the conflicts through older and recent interviews with the participants. Sadly, Tom Fogerty isn't around any longer to shed any additional insight into what occurred.

The most heartbreaking and powerful chapter details the band's induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. John Fogerty made it very clear to musical director Robbie Robertson he wasn't going to perform CCR tunes with his old bandmates. It's sad because it was a shared moment of glory when Fogerty, Cook & Clifford could have put their difficulties behind them. Fogerty performed with the house band after Bruce Springsteen inducted them into the hall of fame.

The book is very fair balanced and the many rare photos (of the band at Tom Fogerty's wedding and performing at their high school reunion) add a nice perspective to the band's story. John's views are expressed via independently published interviews. Still, considering the "myth" that has grown up around the band, it is refreshing to hear both Cook and Clifford's point of view in addition to the three Fogerty brothers (non performer Bob is quoted as well).

It's a perfect companion to Craig Werner's CCR: An Oral History. Taken together, these two books convey the importance of CCR to music and also the difficulties that guarenteed they wouldn't remain together more longer.

This is a thorough, outstanding work of investigation. It unfolds a story that's bound to surprise and astonish all serious Creedence fans no matter how well informed they may think they are. CCR is the only major Rock 'n Roll act that all but vanished withouth a single explanation after just three years of hits in a row. Its leader John Fogerty spent the most part of the next 20 years in seclusion marred by litigation. In spite of all that, Creedence music has reached mythic proportions. This book says why. After finishing it, you'll never listen to CCR in the same way anymore. Be prepared!

This book is disappointing, because it could have been so much better.

There are numerous inexcusable typos, e.g. "hbar" (Planck's constant over 2 pi) is invariably represented as "h", ellipsis "..." show up as "K", vectors appear as a letter with an "r" over them - very sloppy editing.

The presentation is uneven. A lot of time is spent introducing the weirdness of quantum mechanics along with its probabalistic nature - all at the elementary level, and then BAM! Here (Ch. 4) is a Feynman-like Hamiltonian that is a term with creation and annihilation operators plus its conjugate complex, and no explanation of it at all! Even if you have had undergraduate QM, this might be a bit much. Further, the concept of direct product spaces is important for quantum computing, but, although it is used, it is not explained. If you haven't seen it before, you will not figure out much of the stuff in Chapter 4 "Simulating a Simple Quantum Computer" which is the heart of this book. A bit more time spent on the essentials that go into the direct product space, and the use of creation and annihilation operators, Hermitian operators, etc., could have made this book so much better.

The Mathematica simulation is really just a movie. Unless you know enough about QM and Mathematica, you have no hope of doing anything with it other than just watching.

On the good side, the simulation does indeed help scratch the surface of what is different about quantum computing. Also a later discussion of Shor's algorithm for cracking an RSA code is excellent.

If you haven't had an undergraduate course in quantum mechanics, and even if you have, you may find that grasping this book is exceedingly difficult. However, if you skip the rough parts or just accept them, and take a look at the simulation, there is something there to be gained.

This book is awesome!! It explains the ideas of quantum computing in terms I can really understand. It covers topics that are not covered in detail in the summary articles on the web. I specially liked the descriptions of Feynman's quantum processor, error propagation (from mistakes in manufacturing) and Shor's factoring algorithm. The description of the RSA algorithm for public key cryptography is the best I have ever seen. The book comes with a CD-ROM containing executable computer simulations of Feynman's quantum processor, quantum teleportation, Shor's algorithm, quantum cryptography and quantum error correction! It also contains hundreds of references that I have used to track down foundational quantum computing papers that pre-date the web based materials. The code in the BraKet.nb notebook is a mini-toolkit for manipulating quantum mechanical formulas. I was able to use and adapt the code easily, and it really brought the field to life in a new way for me. It is a pity that the book does not have a demo copy of Mathematica on board as this limits the executability of the code to people who already have Mathematica. Nevertheless, this book is an outstanding tour-de-force for Drs. Clearwater and Williams. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about quantum computing from scratch. I have not seen a book this original or exciting in a long long time.

This is a very good introductory book for anybody with some technical or scientific background. It gives an overview of the major developments in the field of quantum computing and communications during the past decade. We find that the text is not intended for scientists working in the field or for physicists doing research in related fields.

Chapter 1 is well written and clearly presented. It describes in a comprehensive way the current trends in computer technology from different points of view. Everybody can immensely profit from reading it. Chapter 2 considers basic notions of computer science in a very understandable way with appropriate examples. Chapter 3 gives some ideas on quantum mechanics. It can be a useful introduction to this subject. Chapter 4 on simulations is very informative with many illustrative examples. Chapter 6 considers classical cryptosystems rather extensively and well. It also gives the basics of Shor's factoring algorithm. Chapter 7 describes the applications of random numbers, mainly in classical computing. Chapters 8 and 9 present quantum cryptography and teleportation respectively. This is a good and informative presentation for nonspecialist. Decoherence and error correction are considered in chapter 10 rather briefly and their description is not very much up to date. Chapter 11 gives a notion of the current experimental realizations of quantum computers and can be very informative for nonspecialists. A more extensive text on quantum algorithms (nature, examples, applications) is maybe also appropriate in the book, as is an explanation of the original ideas of Feynman (and their evolution) regarding the simulation of a quantum system on a quantum computer.

According to us the book is written intelligently and well. It responds to the current need to popularize the explosive developments in this field. The people who would profit the most of it are those who work in different areas of computer science and information technology. It provides a bridge between the ! world of computers and quantum physics with its possible applications.

This music book serves its purpose on a very BASIC level. The chord progressions for most Creedence songs are pretty simple. Therefore, it is hard not to get it right even by accident. Several of the songs are written in the wrong key but a good musician should be able to transpose. Most of the instrumental passages are missing(Gloomy, Suzie Q, Walk On The Water,Ramble Tamble, I Heard It Through The Grapevine). Long As I Can See The Light seems to be a little off with the piano notes. Most of the other piano music is pretty on the money. Cotton Fields is butchered on many levels. The guys only sing the first verse. If there is a book with tabilature out there and guitar solos written out, I would pass on this edition. However, beginners can certainly use this as it is kept very simple.

This is an OK book. It has most of the old CCR songs, it has all but about one. There are piano, vocal, and guitar chords here, but some of the songs printed aren't the CCR version. It really messed up "Cotton Fields." The songs are farily easy to play by an amatur pianist and/or amatur guitarist.

Some song will float in your head for many minutes after it is done. When you hear the first several bars of music - at first you may not know the name of the song (or who sang it), but some where from deep inside of you the words come to your mouth and you sing along with the radio. Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of those groups that had songs you will find yourself doing just that.

David White, murderer, arsonist and rapist, escapes from jail the night before he is due to be executed in the old west. He wants to go to Mexico, but realises he will need money, lots of money in order to survive.

He ends up in the small town of Clearwater on the Texas/Mexico border and decides to rob the bank there, killing three people in the process. But what he hadn't reckoned on was the sheriff of Clearwater, an honest man with a reputation for always getting his man...

There is an ensemble cast of characters here, from the local mayor who is also the newspaper editor, a gentle blacksmith to the bank manager who is also embezzling the funds.

This is the first western I've read and my one complaint would be that there are not many strong female characters, they seem either to just be there for a love interest, or to cook! I'm sure that even in the old west, there were some feisty heroines and I would have liked to have seen some mention of them.

The book itself is a good engaging tale, the writer draws you in with descriptions of the heat and dust, action packed and full of suspense.

A must if you like westerns, and if you don't, then it's still worth a look as an historical novel.

Reviewed by Annette Gisby, author of Silent Screams.

'US Nuclear Weapons in Canada' is a good starting point for anyone interested in this rather obscure section of Cold War history. Though the author does not delve into sufficient detail in certain incidents, the end result is very readable. The reader, however, is often left a bit confused over some points, such as several references to a 'secret police' in Canada placing certain individuals under surveillance. It is a bit unclear whether this refers to the RCMP security service or another group. However, for anyone interested in Canadian-American relations during the Cold War, and the deployment of nuclear weapons by a nuclear power in other countries, I would recommend it.

As an avid reader of military and navy fiction and history, I find Bill Buchanan's book "Clearwater" to be all techno without much attention to character development. The most egregious mischaracterization of an individual is a female Air Force Captain who is brought aboard one of the submarines. The Commanding Officer (CO) assigns the Chief of the Boat to guard her and restricts her to a cabin. His reasoning is his men have been at sea for three months and he won't be liable for their actions. The CO's rationalization is that the Air Force Captain, by her mere presence on the submarine is bad for his marriage and the marriages of the crew. Mr. Buchanan's stereotypical representation that women cannot serve aboard ships is outdated and, in my opinion, continues to reinforce a pattern discrimination of women in the military. While women cannot serve aboard submarines today, soon this too will change. In his book, Mr. Buchanan fails to consider that command and leadership are not gender specific and further embodies that sailors will not follow orders related to women.

I agree with the first reader/reviewer of this book that it's bad, but for a wholly different set of reasons. The portrayal of women-in-arms in the story may indeed be oversimplified and inaccurate, but the main shortcoming of this book is the author's over-reliance on techno-babble and paying too little attention to good ol' fashioned storytelling. It's one thing to describe how the micro-electronic brain of a missile guides it towards its inevitable target, but it's something else altogether to drone on in seemingly endless detail about computer network technology, protocols, security audits, etc., that would make even the most jaded MCSE cry out for mercy. Talk about BORING! Also, though the basic premise of the story is believable, the characters are underdeveloped caricatures that border on the laughable. With people like "Scotty" ("the engines can't take anymore, captain!") and Eion, it's as if the author is trying to make the "warrior nerds" in our armed forces into poster-boys. Just imagine recruiting posters featuring not lean, mean Marines toting M-16's but computer geeks wearing taped glasses hacking into computer networks with a laptop. All in all, this is a story that has a sound premise but lacks the smoothness and fluidity that are essential in a good read. You might call it all substance but no style.

This book is highly entertaining with lots of military action and suspense. Nearing the end of the book, I played hooky from work just to finish the story!